Another Shooter, Another Argument

Here we go again. No sooner did another mad shooter open fire yesterday (this time at the Pentagon) than the familiar argument started up again. The left and the right are once again eager to prove that the latest psycho killer is from "the other side." Lefties are pointing out that the shooter "hated the government," and the righties are replying that the government he seems to have hated was that of G. W. Bush.

Isn't this an odd thing to be arguing about? Some rightists have even pointed out, as if it is significant, that Amy Bishop is a far leftist and, so they say, a Kool-Aid-quaffing Obama fan, though this obviously had nothing to do with her crimes. Why on Earth does anybody care about such things?

This is one of those discussions that make no sense as long as you suffer from the delusion that the subject-matter of all this talk is that portion of reality to which the words literally refer.

What we have here is not a case of what Glenn Loury calls "naive communication," where, as he puts it, "a speaker states literally all that he thinks, and/or an audience accepts his representations at face value." Rather it is a case of "strategic communication," in that it appears to be a literal discussion of the facts of reality but is in fact aimed at achieving ulterior objectives.

I think there at least two ulterior motives are involved here. One is a desire to smear the people on the "other side" as nasty and dangerous.

I think I see something particularly vicious behind this particular smear. I once hear a psychiatrist who worked with accused criminals (interviewing them to see if they are competent to stand trial, etc.) say that the minute he started to think one of his "patients" might momentarily become violent, he found himself "unable to hear" what the person was saying. I think we've all had experience of that state of mind, though not necessarily from the same cause. You can hear the person's words as sounds, but cannot decipher them as human speech.

If someone could put you in this state of mind via strategic discourse -- eg., convincing you that this is a violent sort of person -- it would be as if they have magically dehumanized them. The purpose of this strategy is, not to win an argument, but to rob the other side of their ability to speak and be heard.

The other ulterior motive i see behind this baffling talk is self-defense against the smear. "The killer is not one of us! He's one of them!" You try to deflect the smear back to the other side. Even if it is meant purely as self-defense, though, this move has the same effect as the original smear tactic. It makes it harder to hear the other side. So they have all the more reason to bat it back at you.

The result is a self-perpetuating spiral of self-serving talk.

The Murderer Fabrikant, or: Professors Who Kill, Part II

In connection with an earlier post on lethally violent academics I got a comment from, believe it or not, one of the murderers I discussed there: Valery Fabrikant, a former engineering prof who in 1992 murdered four colleagues at Montreal's Concordia University. Since then, I've gotten another of his missives. Because mine is a moderated comment thread, I am fortunately able to refrain from publishing it, and any further comments from him, out of respect for the families of the four people he slaughtered.

Along with his other repellent characteristics (eg., being a remorseless mass murderer) Fabrikant happens to be an internet attention hog, and I did not want to give him another venue for displaying his horrific creepiness.

There is nonetheless an interesting question here: How on Earth is a convicted mass murderer able to send messages on the internet? For some years I corresponded with Walter Bell, an inmate on Texas' death row (eventually commuted to life). As I understood it, Walt wasn't even allowed access to a radio or tape player, let alone an internet computer.

According to this 2001 newspaper article, Fabrikant had at the time the article was written sent 1,361 internet messages from at least one known email address. God knows how many he has sent by now.

According to the same article:

Although he is given a limited list of eligible phone contacts, Fabrikant gets around this by phoning the home of Maya Tyker, his wife and the mother of his two children. Someone in that household then puts him into contact with whatever number he requests through a three-way conference call.

Evidently, a family member patrols the internet for him and frequently sends out messages dictated by Fabrikant, who is officially denied internet access, to the web. In addition, this ueber-creep maintains a voluminous website, which includes rants claiming that his murders were self defense (on the grounds that the university was trying to give him a fatal heart attack). He also boasts that he is so revered by his fellow prisoners that some have offered to kill his enemies when they are released.

The saddest note in the article is this:

Mark Hogben, whose father Michael was among those murdered by Fabrikant, says he was first made aware of Fabrikant's attention-seeking activities when he did an Internet search for his own last name and discovered a series of notes, written by Fabrikant, justifying himself. Hogben believes that a twisted few actually celebrate Fabrikant's actions.

Imagine sitting at your computer and finding recent screeds from the murderer of your father attacking his victim.

Hogben--like authorities from the Cowansville prison, Concordia University and Colba Internet provider--is resigned to Fabrikant continuing with his Internet activity.

Why? Convicted criminals are sent to prison as punishment, and part of what this means is that the most of the rights that we cherish become (at best) revokable privileges. I'm told that, at least in this country, a prisoner has no non-revokable right to talk to anybody but their attorney, and no such right to use the telephone at all.

Look, even if you are the sort of liberal who thinks that prisoners should have oodles of rights, you can think of this as a distributive justice issue. God-or-Nature, in Her inscrutable wisdom, decided to give this prisoner the brain of a genius, while giving the average prisoner the brain of a dimwit. Whatever the reasons for this in the infinite scheme of things, we shouldn't permit him to use this brain to communicate with the outside world on this massive scale, while the other prisoners are quite unable to do so.

Along with everything else that's wrong with it, it just isn't fair.
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Update: About 18 hours after I posted the above, Fabrikant, or someone claiming to be him, submitted a response to it. It will go unpublished, along with all future comments submitted in his name to this site.

To Kill a Mockingbird

I've just re-watched this movie, and listened to the highly enlightening audio commentary by Alan Pakula and Robert Mulligan (the producer and director).

First off, I'm afraid I have to be the crotchety curmudgeon because the one thing that pops into my head is: they don't make them like this any more.

Well, it's true, they don't. So shoot me.

Beyond the obvious fact that it's in black and white: The pacing compared to today's movies is very leisurely, without rapid cutting and with rather sparse camera movements. The story and the mood are given plenty of time to build up. The sountrack is very quiet, compared to today's films. Nowadays filmmakers seem to live in fear that the audience would fall asleep without the constant presence of a crackling, bustling Foley track and thudding music. In TKaM, even Elmer Bernstein's music track is quiet, and all the more powerful for that, proving that even in music, less is more.

There are three violent deaths in the film, but the only one that happens on screen is the shooting of a rabid dog.

In the whole movie, there is only one special effects shot: the one in which Boo carries the injured Jem to the house. The sparkling, moonlit leaves had to be superimposed on him in the printer.

For a Hollywood movie, there are very few closeups, and when they come, they pack a huge whallop. Again, less is more.

Chefs say that the simplest food, with the fewest ingredients, can be the most impressive, but only if you do everything perfectly. These guys did everything perfectly.

This could be one film where you could make a case that the real auteur is not the director but the literal author -- the person who wrote the screenplay. Like Rod Serling, Horton Foote learned his craft in the Golden Age of live television drama (Playhouse 90, etc.). This produced a lot of writing characterized by ideas and serious issues and a zero level of spectacle. A number of the actors were live theater actors brought in by Foote, which is why so many of them are unfamiliar faces (something that adds greatly to the realism of the film, for me). Mercifully, Gregory Peck was the only one in the cast who was a star at the time (it was the film debut of both William Windom and Robert Duval).

One thing I first noticed on this viewing was the highly effective way Peck's summation speech to the jury was presented. Except at the beginning and the end, I'm pretty sure there are no reaction shots of the jurors at all. Instead, we see Peck from the jury's point of view. He leans toward us, almost as if he were speaking to the movie audience itself. We have the impression that we hold the life of the accused man in our own hands, and through this issue must wrestle with the injustice of the world. There are a number of factors that make this one of the greatest single speeches in any film. The understated-but-brilliant camera work and editing are among the less obvious ones.

Like I say, less is more.

"Climate Panel to Appoint Committee to Review Its Procedures"

The above, I kid you not, is the headline of a Wall Street Journal article on the scandal-rocked Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The IPCC is appointing its own review committee. If I could have appointed my own review committee, I could have gotten tenure seven years earlier and at an even better school than I did.

Seriously, the ideologically driven parts of the academic world constitute a broken system that will not and cannot fix itself. It either has to be fixed by outsiders or its conclusions taken with an appropriate-sized grain of salt. Since the former course would violate academic freedom and isn't politically feasible anyway, I favor the latter.

For the most part, that's what the world does already, but for some reason they make an exception of climatology.

Are the Parts of the Obama Plan Popular, While the Whole is Not?

In the bipartisan health care summit on Thursday BHO used a talking point you see around a lot. Reminded that poll after poll show that the American voter is solidly against his health plan (in one, a combined 75% want him to either start over or drop the health care issue altogether) he said:

...what's interesting is actually when you poll people about the individual elements in each of these bills, they're all for them.

The generally fair and thoughtful conservative columnist Byron York (plus, he has nineteenth-century hair!) points out the large grain of truth in this claim:

Just look at the latest survey from CNN and Opinion Research. When asked if they support "preventing health insurance companies from dropping coverage for people who become seriously ill," 62 percent say yes. When asked whether they support "requiring all large and midsized businesses to provide health insurance for their employees," 72 percent say yes. And when asked if they support "preventing health insurance companies from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions," 58 percent say yes.

So what gives? Are people really stupid enough, as BHO suggests, to support all the parts of something and reject the whole? Probably what he is thinking is that the voters have been confused by the propaganda of the folks who don't like his plan. But people would have to be really, seriously stupid to be manipulated in that way. Either people are committing a gross logical fallacy, or they have been bamboozled into having an opinion on the plan while remaining grossly ignorant of its most basic components.

York has a sensible explanation for these odd-looking preferences, one that avoids the assumption that Americans are blithering morons: when you ask about the parts one at a time, that sounds like incrementalism, and when you ask about the whole enchilada, that sounds like radical change. Americans prefer incrementalism to radical change. Whether you agree with that preference or not, it is one that neither violates the requirements of logic nor reflects abysmal ignorance.

I have an additional possible explanation. When people are asked about the components, no mention is made of possible costs. Would it be nice to eliminate pre-existing conditions as a consideration for health insurance? Sure, why not? Well, if we enacted that component, and did nothing else, then people would have no reason to buy insurance until they develop and expensive medical condition. Paying for routine doctor visits and medicines would cost a lot less than my premiums do right now. But then premiums would skyrocket, far beyond where they already are. Would you like that? That's not the question, and of course most folks wouldn't be thinking of that unless the pollster points it out. Questions about components ask you about whether you think they would be a good thing and do not encourage thinking about costs.

On the other hand, one of the things everybody knows about the whole package is that its defenders say it would cost around a trillion dollars over the first ten years. Here probably a lot of people are thinking of costs, even in the absence of encouragement to do so. Thus to some extent answers to the part-questions and whole questions are about different things. Also, the answer to the whole-question deserves to be taken more seriously, since taking costs into consideration is exactly the sort of thing that common-sense prudence requires.

People aren't as stupid as their leaders think they are.

Also, I don't think it is true that people are "all for" all of the provisions of the bill. Lists like York's, and the one Obama gives in the comment I quote from above, omit mention of the least popular provision in the plan.

For this one, poll numbers swing wildly, depending on how the question is asked. Here is the result of one poll (note that this question does mention one of the costs of the provision):

Question: "Let's say that Congress passed a new law saying that everyone either would have to obtain private or public health insurance approved by the government or pay a tax of $750 or more every year. Would you support or oppose this law?"

STRONGLY SUPPORT 13%
SOMEWHAT SUPPORT 8%
SOMEWHAT OPPOSE 17%
STRONGLY OPPOSE 54%
DON’T KNOW/REFUSED 8%

That's 71% opposed. Pretty terrible numbers for a provision that folks are "all for."

What is Terrorism?

Joseph Stack's suicidal attack on the Austin IRS offices last week sparked an interesting debate about what terrorism is. Opinion is divided on whether Stack was acting as a terrorist. Here is my take.

Scenario #1: There is some act, A, that I want you to do. I approach you and a friend. Your friend is "innocent" in the sense that they are not responsible for your not doing A. I draw a gun and point it at you, threatening to kill you if you do not do A. This is coercion.

Scenario # 2: Same as above, but I initiate our conversation by drawing my weapon and blowing your friend's brains out, right before your eyes. I then point my weapon at you. You are terrified and demoralized. Your capacity for rational deliberation has been more or less wiped out. Whatever I do next, you are much more likely to do A than you were a moment ago. This is terror.

[Hat-tip: For these examples I am indebted to professor and dissertator Mohamed Abed.]

Terror is a non-coercive use of violence, though typically it is part of a wider coercive plan. Another sort of violence, quite different from both, is revenge. Coercion and terror are both cases of strategic behavior (aimed at altering future behavior on the part of someone else) while revenge is non-strategic. In revenge we inflict harm as an end in itself.

Revenge is retrospective and despairing. It redresses an evil in the past, not by making the future better, but by adding another evil. Terror is prospective and optimistic. The terrorist is trying to steer the future in a good direction. Terrorist suicide bombers do not commit suicide because they see their lives as hopeless: quite the reverse.

Some people have argued that Stack cannot be regarded as a terrorist because he was not part of a conspiracy, such as Al-Qaeda. If you accept the above view, this is quite irrelevant to whether he acted as a terrorist or not. Terror is defined by motive and method, not by social context.

Others have pointed out that his suicide note said he hoped that his attack would spark an uprising. I am inclined to think that this is evidence that his act was terrorist in nature. At least, it suggests that his behavior was strategic.

Still others have said that the fact that he burned his house down is evidence that his behavior was not terroristic. That may well be right. This seemingly pointless act of destruction suggests that his motives were pure hatred and anger, and that his act was non-strategic, belonging in the category of revenge and not terror.

Others have said that the only reason he is not universally regarded as a terrorist is that he was white. I rather doubt this, as his act was genuinely ambiguous. It really depends on which aspect of his act you take more seriously.

Unless someone gives me a good reason to think otherwise, I currently lean toward thinking of Stack as a despairing, vengeful nut and not a genuine terrorist.

Market Failure or Government Failure?

This evening there will be a panel here at the University of Wisconsin on one of the greatest issues of the day: Should we be more worried about the way markets fail, or the way governments fail? When markets go wrong, voters tend to flee to the safety of state power. But is it really all that safe?

The two speakers include economist Edward Lopez, an economist with a George Mason Ph. D., and a philosopher of economics, Dan Hausman, from my own department. (Yay home team! Actually, on this one, I may sympathize more with the other side. Of course, it depends on what they say.)

I will be moderating, if moderation should prove to be possible. The poster at the left has all the details. (Click to enlarge. It tells the whole story.)