Warning: coarse language! 

I just finished struggling with a triply-sealed container for the umpteenth time.  This time I was wise enough to get out my needle-nosed pliers before I broke a fingernail.  It made me wonder how many person-years of frustrating effort are wasted on this nonsense every minute.  (See below for my estimate.)

“Wasted?  Nonsense?” I hear the self-righteous Safety Nut crying, “Don’t you care about people being poisoned by domestic terrorists?”

No.

“No?  No??  NO??!  What kind of monster are you?”

The kind who thinks.  Every policy, if enforced, has consequences — some good (benefits) and some bad (costs).   Ignoring either one is a fool’s errand.  Many (if not most) people don’t want to think; they want to spout homilies.

“No price is too great to pay to save even one human life,” recites the idiot.

Of course it is!  You are SO full of shit!  If you really gave a damn about saving lives, you’d be giving all your money to the Food Bank, or (to save a lot more lives) to some Relief Fund for Refugees, or (to save the most lives) to medical or agricultural research.  Maybe you’d even be doing something yourself.

I reckon I spend an average of about a minute a day cursing at jars and bottles with child-proof seals.  (Some children must be very resourceful.)  That means Americans are investing about 16 person-years per day in preventing poisoning by sick fucks.  That’s just under 6,000 person-years per year.  Assuming the putative poisoned would have an average of 60 years subtracted from their lives, we would need to be preventing at least 100 poisonings per year just to break even.  There must be a lot of sick fucks out there.

We could quibble over the difference between living under frustration and being dead, but if you are sure being dead is so much worse, I’d be interested in hearing all about your experience of being dead.

If you lower the bus fare in a major city, some people will die as a result who would otherwise have lived.  The question is not, “Will this save even one human life?”  It is, “Will this do more good than harm?”

See also Price of Life.

Every unsolicited advertisment you see conveys an unsubtle message about what the advertiser thinks of you.  This is especially true of the ads you get on the Web, since (unless you go to a lot of trouble to subvert it) there is software analyzing every keystroke and/or click of your mouse to determine what appeals might be effective on your subconscious.  But (with some effort) you can block almost all advertising from your Web browser.  The same cannot be said of broadcast media like TV and radio, which have to draw their inferences from which programming you are watching/listening to on which channel.  I for one find it impossible to endure the ads that come with any sort of “action” movie or series, since they more or less explicitly declare the advertisers’ belief that I am a testosterone-drenched teenaged male moron.  “Chick flics” are no better, as their ads scream, “You are a gullible and insecure woman, worried exclusively about your age, looks and popularity,” or, sometimes, “You will send money to anyone who shows a picture of a sad puppy.”  Fortunately, I have a video recorder that allows me to fast forward over these insults.

Unfortunately, I have to buy food; and at least some of the time I have to shop in supermarkets.  There I am trapped in checkout lines where I cannot avoid looking at the crassest tabloid garbage unless I close my eyes and try to navigate by touch alone — which entails its own hazards in that context.

Before starting this Rant, for once I bothered to check with Google to see what other people might have written on the subject.  I was horrified to discover that most of the Web-accessible opinion on supermarket tabloids seems to accept the notion that they are harmless expressions of Western cultural tradition and/or useful sources of information that would otherwise be suppressed.  (Yes, I enjoyed Men in Black too, but I didn’t take it seriously!)

I disagree.  I think supermarket tabloids are the most profoundly insulting abuse in the entire arsenal of advertising insults.  And I consider supermarkets that respect the “tradition” of shoving them in my face in unavoidable checkout lines to be unworthy of my business.

Surely I am not alone in this reaction.  Surely there are enough others who feel as strongly as I do that we could mount a class action against all supermarkets for defamation of our cultural character.  Surely…

Are you with me?

This is so obvious it’s embarrassing to be writing about it, but it’s also obvious that a large fraction of my fellow citizens just don’t get it; so I have no choice:

There is a difference between personal choice and epidemiology. 

Wikipedia says, “Epidemiology is the study of the patterns, causes, and effects of health and disease conditions in defined populations. It is the cornerstone of public health, and shapes policy decisions and evidence-based practice by identifying risk factors for disease and targets for preventive healthcare.”  I’m happy with that definition.  Lots of people are charged with the responsibility of worrying about the epidemiological consequences of various choices; and so they should be. 

Personal choice is different.  It’s up to you whether you want to worry about something that might affect you adversely.  Or it should be.  These days I find that an awful lot of other people think it’s up to them whether I should worry about my risks.

A concrete example might help clarify this distinction:  Project Gasbuggy.   Back in middle of the 20th Century, certain parties proposed to use nuclear bombs to collapse salt domes underground, releasing vast quantities of natural gas that was (and still is) stored in such natural formations.  The gas thus released would be radioactive, of course, so it was proposed to mix it with other natural gas to dilute the radioactivity to “acceptable” levels.

This proposal was rejected, but let’s suppose it had recently been implemented.  Should you worry?  Let me rephrase that: should you be worried for your own safety?  Exposing millions of people to radioactive natural gas would probably cause thousands of “extra” deaths per year from cancer, so epidemiologically it would clearly be a Bad Thing.^*  But your chances of dying of cancer would probably be boosted from about 20% to something like 21%.  (These are not carefully calculated numbers, but it hardly matters for the purpose of my argument.)

Let’s face it: regardless of how much exercise you get, how meticulously you optimize your diet, how good your medical plan is or how carefully you avoid all dangerous practices and hazardous materials, you, personally, are going to die.  You need to start by facing this fact.  Once you have done so, you should realize that all you have any control over are the time and cause of your death.  And not much control at that.  It pays not to be foolish, but people are pretty foolish anyway.  (Or are they?  That’s another question.)

So, in my opinion, for the reasons stated above, you would be silly to worry for you own safety about many things that we all might agree would be unethical to impose on the population at large.

–=–

^*Note added in proof:   Upon reflection, I’ve realized that good ethical decisions are not that simple, especially when they affect millions of people.  Suppose Project Gasbuggy had gone ahead, and suppose it had indeed caused (let’s say) 1000 additional people to die of radiation-induced cancer in the following half century.  Does that make it a Bad Thing?  It depends on how many people the additional natural gas saved from death.  Any decision affecting millions or people will both cause some to die “prematurely” who would otherwise have lived much longer and prevent some deaths that would otherwise have come “prematurely”.  (See the post “Premature Deaths” in this collection.)  Rational ethics requires consideration of both numbers.  In fact, rational ethics also requires consideration of many other factors, such as quality of life for different people.  Rational ethics is hard!  I suppose that’s why so many people resort to a list of Commandments to guide their behavior.  (Morality is not the same as ethics.  Duh!)

Many neologisms have inherited the connotations of literacy, some of which are formed by the addition of a prefix, like “science literacy”; others are shameless perversions of English, like “numeracy”. The latter is generally interpreted as competence in basic mathematical skills such as addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. I have come to believe that there is a level of competence even more fundamental than numeracy, and I have invented a disgustingly postmodern name for it:

A majority of First World adults seem to lack this competence, and are failing spectacularly to teach it to their children. This is not a new phenomenon, but it is catching on.

The first example that comes to mind was in the 1960s, when selenium (Se) was identified as a cause of heavy metal poisoning (analogous to lead poisoning); showing its capacity to be proactive, the US Congress passed a law making it illegal to sell foodstuffs containing a detectable amount of Se. “Detectable” was an incautious word to use; at the time, it was possible to detect parts per million (ppm) of Se fairly easily. But Se detection technology improved until a few years later it was possible to detect parts per billion (ppb). Shortly thereafter it was found that Se is an essential mineral, making it illegal in the USA to sell food that would keep you alive. Oops.

A more recent example is the Fukushima disaster. Within a few months of the reactor meltdown in Japan, isotopes specific to that event were detected in sea water on the West coast of North America. In no time, many entrepreneurs got rich selling iodine at huge profits to panicked citizens who believed they were about to perish from radiation poisoning. None of these people thought to ask how much radiation was washing up on our beaches, or how sensitive the detectors were that made the identification. For comparison, they should inquire how much more radiation is routinely injected into patients’ veins for diagnostic radiation infusion scans at their local hospital.

Similar misunderstandings result from the increasingly widespread policy of zero tolerance, which see. The problem with zero tolerance is that zero is a very small number. Nature does not contain zero of anything. Not selenium, not radiation, not cyanide, not E. coli, not “insect parts and rat hairs”, not viruses or cancer cells in your body. Thank goodness, since at least some of these are now understood to be essential to life.

As a society, we seem to have given up any sense of balance or ambiguity, in favour of a binary sorting of all things, people and ideas into good or bad. This makes decision-making easy, but it makes wisdom impossible and it makes life hell for everyone. One might imagine that this is due to the bad example set by American politicians in recent years. The definition of Republican policy is “diametrically opposite to Democrat policy” and vice versa. Compromise is seen as weakness; s/he who compromises will not be reelected. Which lays the responsibility back at the feet of the electorate; perhaps we have exactly the government we deserve.

We all know about placebos, right?  From the Latin placēbō, “I shall please”?  When you take a placebo, you feel better because you think you’re going to feel better.   Of course, it’s just your imagination, right?  You don’t really feel better; it’s all a fake, right?

Not so much.  A double-blind experiment on Parkinson’s patients with fluorine-18 labelled L-dopa vs. placebos showed that the placebos were effective at the specific goal of causing the brain to produce dopamine.  The patients didn’t just “feel better”, their brains actually performed the same biochemistry that is stimulated by L-dopa.  Think about that.  Think very carefully.   These people simply thought they were getting L-dopa; they were not trained in using the mind’s power over the body.   What if they were?

Yeah, yeah, we’ve all heard that woo-woo stuff before, right?  Okay, never mind.   Just remember that the “Placebo Effect” is real.   Officially real, as in, no drug trial that fails to take it into account is considered valid by… well, anyone.   Now think very carefully about the implications of this established fact.

If you believe a pill is going to make you better, it will make you better.  Perhaps not as much better as a pill that has a direct effect on your biochemistry, but genuinely better.   If this is true, then the opposite might be expected to be true as well:  if you believe a pill is going to make you sick, it will make you sick.

And not just pills.  Also innumerable environmental poisons, radiation, even stuff that used to be considered harmless but has now been shown (or claimed, and believed) to be detrimental to health at some concentration.   If you believe it will make you sick, it will make you sick.  

This is called the “Nocebo Effect” (from the Latin nocēbō, “I shall harm”, from noceō, “I harm”).  It has also been called the “Antiplacebo Effect” or the “Negative Placebo Effect”, but that seems weaker to me.   I want to make a strong point about this response, not just a codicil to the literature on the Placebo Effect.

Today there is an epidemic of allergies and autoimmune disorders, especially among young people who have spent their whole lives being told of all the ubiquitous poisons in their environment, and have never been told that the human body is incredibly resilient and robust.   Some of this may be genuine reactions to actual pollutants and unhealthy foods, but it must also be due in part to the expectation that everything we eat or drink or breathe is poisoning us.

Notice that I said, “…in part…”; I didn’t say that environmental poisons don’t exist, or that all maladies are caused by bad attitudes. But what you believe is a significant contributing factor to what you experience. This fact is no longer the property of New Age mystics. It is real science now. Unfortunately, we seem to have no idea what to do about it except to excoriate anyone who disputes the notion that we are all helpless victims with no agency in our own lives.

We can learn everything we really need to know about politics and economics from watching dogs at play.

We have two poodles, standard “Arlo” and mini “Tuffy” (well, he needs to be!).  The theme of all play between Arlo and Tuffy is “Mine!”  This is normal enough (and a good model for most human play), but yesterday I noticed a new nuance:

If there is one rawhide bone, they will spend all day snatching it from each other and running to hide it where they can gloat.  If the other loses interest, they will bring it out in the open and growl to get things going again.  You might think that big Arlo would have an unfair advantage over little Tuffy, but in fact it’s the other way around: Tuffy can get into places where Arlo can’t, and sit there with the bone, growling and barking.  It’s cute — they are almost human!  It’s also mostly good-natured competition.  Things are simple and it’s all in fun.

It gets darker and more complicated when we foolishly give them two bones.  You might think, as we did, that now there would be one for each and thus nothing to fight over.  Wrong.  The game now becomes “Both mine!”  Which is tricky because neither one can actually hold both bones in his jaws at once.  So they invent schemes for  hiding Bone 1 somewhere and then fighting over Bone 2.  Dominance can only be achieved by capturing all the wealth and protecting it in clever hiding places.

Moreover, they don’t have fun any more.  Because the competition is no longer simple and straightforward, it is perpetually frustrating and the growling turns to snarls.  Tuffy and Arlo come close to a real dogfight until we take away one of the bones.

From this I deduced that a higher standard of living is unlikely to make people more willing to share the wealth unless we can change some basic instincts that go way, way back.  Dogs don’t compete to get what they need; they compete to have it all, because that’s where the fun is, as long as scarcity is the rule.  With abundance comes confusion, dissatisfaction and animosity, every time.

Nowadays I prefer to think of myself as a Canadian, but I was born and raised in the USA, so I still care what happens to the Great Experiment in Democracy.  Sadly, it seems to be over.

The 2014 midterm elections are only a few days away now, and if you believe the deluge of panicked Emails from various progressive Democrats (many of whom I have already sent a few bucks), the Republicans are about to commandeer Congress due to the massive funding of attack ads on TV by the Kochs and other billionaire friends of the Repos.  The Dems’ idea is to repurpose the demonstrated power of social media to “crowd-source” a counterattack.

I’ve stopped donating, and I’m about to stop caring.  Want to know why?  It’s not because I’ve suddenly turned more conservative in my old age.  It’s not because I’ve decided to throw my lot in with what appears to be the winning side.  It’s not even because whichever side “wins”, the shadow government seems hardly affected (although that is a contributing factor).

It’s because everyone seems to have accepted the premise that elections are decided mainly by who can afford the most TV time for their attack/defense ads.

Either this is untrue, in which case I am profoundly disappointed in the Democrats who are trying to convince us of it, or it’s true, in which case I am so nauseated by the electorate that I can’t help hoping they get just what they deserve — even though the rest of us will probably perish with them.

Most people seem to think the Golden Rule is all we need: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”  Well, that would certainly be an improvement upon the more prevalent, “Do unto others before they do unto you,” but it doesn’t really help unless we exercise some subtlety and foresight.  It is probably a good thing to tell someone if they are behaving like an ass.  On the other hand, how keen are you to be the recipient of such honesty when it’s the truth?  Hmmm…

There’s also the problem of misapprehending other people’s intent — not to mention your own!  The most common cause of animosity is attribution of evil intent to someone who believes s/he is trying to do the right thing.

I propose a “Platinum Rule” that should be exercised even more assiduously than the Golden Rule.  It goes like this:

“Try to understand why others think and act as they do.” 

Most people are sincerely trying to do what they perceive as the right thing.  If you can understand why they believe that, then you have a better foundation for constructive dialogue than if you accuse them of intentional evil.

Of course, intentional evil does occur; but even then it is easier to expose if you try to explore other explanations.  Nothing annoys a true evil-doer like a pointed question that assumes their innocence.

Note that I am not espousing “radical cultural relativism” — just because you understand why someone thinks and acts as they do does not mean you agree with or excuse their behaviour; it just gives you some purchase in your attempts to talk them out of it.

I’d like to speak in praise of Nothing.

Think of what you can do with Nothing.

Nothing is easy to be good for. What else can we say that about?

No one minds if you take Nothing for granted.

Nothing guarantees a 100% profit. (“Nothing ventured, Nothing gained.”)

Nothing is the most popular children’s pastime. (Just ask some kids what they are doing.)

Nothing is what everyone knows without having to learn it in school, although many do.

Nothing is what’s bothering your lover. Just ask!

Nothing is what I like about almost everything.