The Conscience of a Conman

Interstellar's "No Time for Caution," remastered

The Progress of Humanity

Humans are irrevocably flawed. We default to communication silos, we often steal when we can, we exploit each other. Wikipedia's list of ongoing conflicts is depressingly long.

And yet, we are less violent today as a species than at any point in our world's history - Steven Pinker's book on the subject is both sobering in revealing violent history and uplifting in showing how many fewer people are massacred these days. Some who dispute Steven Pinker's argument remind us that the deterrent of nuclear weapons might have a lot to do with this, but they concede that the overall numbers are down. In addition, increased global trade has drawn countries together in a way that makes true war impossible between an increasingly large world community.

This is not the state of humanity that all desire. ISIL and its peers seek an apocolyptic world of warlords, where violence and death are a regular part of life. They dream of a mass regression of humanity to an earlier, more brutal time when families were split and sunders by the whim of kings and dictators.

When attacks come out of this ideology - made events that seek to awaken our "reptile brains" and make us fear each other - it's a mistake to think of counter-pushes as "weak." On the contrary, our greatest warriors dreamed of creative days of peace, and maintaining peace is harder than creating way. Anyone can destroy, shoot a gun, or create chaos. Order, peace, and stability take work.

That's the cause that we dedicate ourselves to each time we vote in an election, or yell at each other on social media instead of doing violence, or help out a stranger only tied to us by our shared humanity. That's the dream of so many warriors in years past, and its why I have no doubt that ISIL and its peers will fall apart. However, there will always be others to take their place - the flaw isn't something we can eradicate.

We just have to keep proving each day that it's better to live in peace than to dream of war.

On recent events and their designation "Terrorism"

Terrorism is "the use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims."

These days, I worry that we misuse the term. A killing spree caused by anger against the world isn't terrorism - it's mass murder. And mass murder is just as bad as terrorism - both take life, and both do harm to our communities, families, selves. The recent Colorado Springs shooting and San Bernardino massacre are both important data points in the ongoing struggle against mass killings in the United States.

However, I don't think we should call either "terrorism" at this point.

The added dynamic of terrorism is that someone is doing it to cause a political reaction, or to change the behavior of a population. The targets of terrorism are not the direct victims of gunfire - they are us, the "everyone else" who might have been at that store, or at that party. Even if the shootings in recent events were motivated by political statements, that doesn't make them terrorism because they weren't going after our minds.

Now, should the non-designation change our response?

I would say no. The designation of terrorism is tactical - it calls us to be on guard against manipulation of society through violence. For example, the recent suspicions of Syrian refugees after the Paris attacks (committed by people who were neither Syrian nor refugees, but who apparently carried a passport from a refugee to ruse us) was a successful result of that terrorist action. A public murder, such as the killing of a reporter and cameraman in Virginia, may not have those same attempted manipulations, but it demands our response just like any act of terrorism.

The DC Sniper Attacks are my counter-example - they were committed over a period of days with the goal of terrorizing a population to "shut things down" in the United States. The clear targets were not the random victims (known to the killers in 2/3 cases above), but instead the rest of us. That did demand a calculated response - taking all actions to catch the murderers, and knowing that they sought to create fear and therefore taking counter actions (like putting more police in schools).

The words we use to label things matter. Let's not muddy the waters of "terrorism" by assigning it to every killing with a political connection.

EDIT on 1/3/16:

Now we have some militiamen in Oregon occupying a Federal building and a lot of questions about if this action is "Terrorism." While it matches my dictionary definition, I don't think they occupation is being done to scare other Americans or (and I don't see a threat that anyone will be taken hostage). They also aren't doing this to change the original prison sentences - the Hammond family doesn't welcome this occupation. I'm still struggling, though, to create a clear definition.

The political stance these people are taking seems to be "it is the right of the people to occupy an empty federal building."

What it means to "use" Whiteness for good

Posted by Upworthy on Tuesday, December 1, 2015

The seductive temptation of inaction

Think of any recent news of political action or decision and you will find quotes in opposition. That's normal and expected - the easy, non-controversial decisions don't get coverage. However, it's much easier to oppose - to support inaction - than it is to take action. The person acting must take responsibility for outcomes. Those pushing for inaction have no responsibility. The easier side to be on is inaction/opposition, and many commentators have discussed this in recent years.

I want to highlight another tendency to inaction that is sneakier and a sibling to righteous opposition: the showcasing of a harmful outcome to someone involved in a policy.

We see news articles all of the time about the people harmed be various government policies. Many times, they feature people suffer from unjust gov't decisions or results, and put a human face on those harmed by poor decisions or policies. This sentiment is valuable, and I'm glad to see these types of stories, but they also represent risk.

The third character we don't see in these stories is the status quo, which has no face and no new victims to showcase. We get used to the constant pain of bad policies, especially when the pain comes from complexity or faceless bureaucracies that can't be easily placed in an article, and the victims are more collective than singular. It becomes hard to compare the harm of action and inaction, but without a good way to find or weigh the beneficiaries of a new policy against those harmed, inaction is easier.

I suppose the same problem applies in budgeting - the benefits of targeting spending may shine brighter than the collective pain of slightly hire taxes. Individual stories are easy - collective benefits are harder to see. Both matter.

Not Allowed at the Party

I like politics where lots of "stuff" happens because the nature of political governance is that lots of "stuff" happens - small and large. The ridiculous charade that we collectively put candidates through mirrors much of the scrutiny and complexity of actual office, though the stakes of "what shall this tweet reply say?" are much less than "what's the best way to implement the Iran Deal?"

A static race with unchanging narratives does not accomplish this purpose. Indeed, the shuffling, sorting and surfacing of new candidates that we saw in the Republican 2012 primary was a handy way to apply scrutiny to a wide group of candidates. I worry that right now, I'm not seeing a path for this process on one side of the political spectrum, but rather a long and slow burn towards a general election that's already being planned.

Strong candidates that want the best for the country should welcome other strong candidates from their party, even as they seek to rise above each other. Campaigns provide platforms for messages and visibility, and the universal dominance of one candidate in media coverage has a subtle choking effect on other candidates, especially those with valuable contributions to the national political conversation.

That's why, in general, whenever I see articles or coverage to the effect that someone or some group is trying to silence someone else, politically, I'm disappointed. Give voice to the argument from someone else, then win it. I want to get my mind changed by an argument I hear from a candidate, and I'm not sure that's ever truly happened. Let's hear from more voices, as many as possible. The votes of the people will winnow the field.

Congress Is Making Life Harder for Economics - Bloomberg View

Congress Is Making Life Harder for Economics - Bloomberg View: "Whatever the reason, the BLS reductions are part of two dismaying trends in our legislative priorities -- cuts to research funding, and a disregard for the importance of social science. In the case of the BLS, it would be a mistake to further hobble an agency that does so much to aid our very understanding of the economy around us.

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'via Blog this'

For the First Time in History, Less than 10% of Humanity Lives in Extreme Poverty | Foundation for Economic Education

For the First Time in History, Less than 10% of Humanity Lives in Extreme Poverty | Foundation for Economic Education: "According to the World Bank, for the first time in human history, “less than 10 percent of the world’s population will be living in extreme poverty by the end of 2015.”

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'via Blog this'

Joy in the audience

Tonight, I met the perfect audience person. There's a rare joy in performing when you know - know - that you've nailed a part, or a piece, or a phrase, or a "thing" that helps make a song what it is. (Example: skip to 1:15, watch his face for a radiant grin at 1:56) Then there's a second joy when the crowd "gets it" in a way you don't expect; see the embedded video at 1:28 for Lea Salonga getting that feeling from rowdy bar.

 

The third feeling is when you see it in a particular person. It can happen in speaking as well - when you know that your words have reached and changed a person, but in music - it's the feeling of creating something beautiful and watching someone else immerse themselves in the music. I didn't start singing tonight with the intention of making that connection, but once I noticed it, I couldn't completely ignore it - how this person sang under her breath, eyes closed, breathing in the music and experiencing more fully than I typically can.

It was lovely.

On Harm, Damage, and Policy

I noted with interest some of the criticism and critique that came out this weekend against a new project of my colleagues. Essentially, some of the arguments posted were "this data/site doesn't do X, therefore, it shouldn't exist" or "this data harms Y, therefore it shouldn't exist." Of course, the data is helpful in other ways, allowing limited comparisons, but it's rare to see a comment saying "this looks pretty good, ok." So instead, the comments are all "THIS IS AMAZING" vs "THIS SUCKS" and whatever the product is, it feels like a dystopia where completely opposite conclusions are possible.

So it goes with many political and legal policies.

If you experience a crime and the law is such that the criminal is not found guilty, the law feels far too soft. If you are falsely accused and your life is severely harmed, the law feels far too hard. This is the nature of political compromise - some times different interests each have valid perspectives and the right answer does involve weighing them and coming down somewhere in the middle.

In the area of rape and sexual assault, where hard evidence is often extraordinarily difficult to come by (and where I volunteered for years in college), there is no policy that will prevent horrible outcomes - either for survivors that can't get justice or for the falsely accused. I've seen several stories in recent years with long, personal profiles of people on both sides of this equation, and I've realized that no matter how bad the stories are, the overall data is much more important when it comes to identifying the best policy. To some extent, policy making means ignoring single trees to see the dynamic of the forest, but that also feels a little harsh and cold (and to be clear, this is the wrong answer when it comes to supporting anyone who has been through trauma). I'll be looking for examples of leaders and people who walked this line well.

Rankings and Inputs

I've written before about higher ed data and ranking, and its worth revisiting that subject today on the heels of a large data release by the Department of Education (along with a website my wonderful colleagues in various government offices helped to create). I should also note that I am only speaking in my individual capacity. None of the words in this post represent the views of 18F, the General Services Administration, or the United States Government.

Data releases are wonderful because they give true information about a topic, often replacing anecdotal evidence that depends more on who we know than the true state of a Thing. My thoughts on financial success after college depend partly on if I hung out with aspiring educators vs management consultants, for example. Hearing that one of your friends had a great experience at College X might lead you to recommend it, but there's a chance that your friend's experience was one of the rare positive ones. I am all for releasing data.

However, in looking at data, we still need to apply context and analysis. Data depends on a varsity of factors, such as the group being examined or the method used to collect it. College ranking data is especially scary when used long-term because the selective colleges being examined have a lot of control, though their admissions and administrative processes, over some of the data inputs. For example, US News looks at the % of classes with under 20 students - and I'm not sure its a coincidence that some college cap certain classes at exactly 19 students.

In a world without manipulation, the US News datapoint could be used to interpolate a bell curve of class sizes. Instead, I suspect that colleges work to shove as many classes as possible under that 19-person cap - meaning that a college with a mix of 10 person and 15 person classes ends up looking equivalent to a college full of 19 person classes, even though the 10 person experience is much more rewarding (in my anecdotal experience).

Example of a bell curve with a spike at one level

The worst implication of using and relying on data like this is that the attributes that make a strong college cohort may end up producing data that looks "worse" than other cohorts - meaning that colleges that seek to do the best job possible have an incentive to manipulate their incoming classes to have stronger data.

For example, a college that wants to produce graduates with higher incomes after 10 years might have an incentive to take more students interested in economics, technology, or engineering - disadvantaging those interested in other fields. Colleges interested in keeping a higher graduation rate might shy away from admitting anyone with mental health struggles or other risk factors that could lead them not to graduate - regardless of a college's strength. Finally, colleges interested in reporting a high amount of average aid could seek more students who are extremely poor (who need more aid) and disadvantage those from middle class families that need a small amount of aid, but not much.

That last paragraph describes the three primary data points used by the college scorecard. That doesn't make the data that was used bad, but it does mean that we should pay attention to the incentives that we create in rating systems and how to actively counter act them. For example, colleges could get "credits" on their graduation rates by admitting more students with active risk factors, or by being able to report different data about why students don't complete a degree. Average earning data should take into account the earnings of a student's parents and seek to remove that variable, since a college is more important for the change it makes to a student.

In the end, a college isn't everything in a student's future. We shouldn't make schools own outcomes that depend on the students they choose to admit - instead we should look at how a college bends an incoming class's future toward job satisfaction, strong connections with peers, impact towards social good, and ultimate life happiness. Is that data available, truly? I doubt it.