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Robots and Emotions

Published April 25, 2009 Design discourse , Uncategorized Leave a Comment

Designing robots with true emotions — a topic I ran into on a different forum —
may be a matter of quibbling about semantics and definitions — e.g. if ‘true’ emotions are understood as reactions to attempts to satisfy human needs (success or failures to such attempts) then robots wouldn’t fall within that realm. I don’t want to enter that controversy, nor do I have anything to contribute from a programming / AI point of view, my programming competence being quite rudimentary as well as outdated. I feel that I can add some useful contributions from a design or planning perspective, however, that may help in overcoming one impoortant limitation of focus I have noticed there. That is the focus on emotions as reactions to events or processes related to physiological and survival needs. I am not denying the pertinence of that perspective, and am sure that pursuing it will produce interesting results. However, as an architect concerned about how the built environment produces not only satisfactory physiological conditions for survival and functioning of the human body but also emotions that seem unrelated to mere physiological mechanisms at least at first glance. Further investigations might clarify how proportions, rhythm, scale, composition of building form etc. produce physiological responses that contribute to our sense of well-being or displeasure, and therefore emotions. But I am convinced that there are additional factors involved that can only be classified as survival mechanisms with some procrustean difficulty. I see humans endowed with a need for defining themselves as individuals — that is, basically, being ‘different’ from others. This can include adopting some archetypal or culturally defined identity, a social role, a group identity based on age, work or career, philosophy, even fashion, life style, hobbies etc. I call this ‘image’ — of who we want to be. But the desire for ‘difference’ essentially ends up in a tendency or need for designing an identity — a ‘different’ one from any we have known before. And the images we humans adopt (the concept of ‘role model’ aims at this but misses the ‘design’ aspect of the need in presupposing a ‘model’ to imitate) can be quite contrary to the rationality of mere survival of body or species: it can include aspects of asceticism, of service to others, self-sacrifice, for example. Other criteria come into play here: criteria of ‘nobility’, of friendship, the good, beauty, for instance, that may appear ‘irrational’ to the survival-focused warrior.

The role of the built environment in this now becomes more clear: it can ‘match’ or reinforce that image of who we are or want to be. Or it can fail to do so: mismatch, conflict with our desired image. And that sense of match or mismatch is arguably an emotion that we as designers are crucially interested in. More importantly: If we recognize this human tendency or desire to ‘design’ / redesign ourselves according to a new image, to become individuals of our own choice, as a human right, we must ask ourselves how our building designs can help, assist people in this quest. This becomes the supreme responsibility of the architect. It cannot consist of merely expressing, asserting the creativity of the architect / designer (making design creativity a consumer item and thereby arguably cheapening it, even as we are asked to pay for fashionable design…) but should ask how it can help the user design, create that new identity, that new image. One might imagine that the image will first appear as a mental construct in the users’ mind, and then entices the person to actions that define the life that goes with it. That process may in reality be more interactive: the building may invite users to engage in occasions, activities, that define or are more in tune with a new image, which only becomes defined and recognized over time through the activities and design forms with which it is associated.

The pleasure or displeasure of this ‘matching’ or mismatching of built environment form and the imagery it evokes in users’ minds, with the images those users might want to adopt as their desired ‘way of life’ — something not just ‘chosen’ from a pre-established menu of societal options or opportunities, but actually created by the individual emerging as such in the very process of creating: those are the emotions we should be concerned about.

The question I have for the robot designers arising from this would be: How can robots be given an internal representation of such images against which to match external messages conveying (attempting to evoke) imagery? Can they be given image preferences for themselves, which would then be the basis for the emotions derived from the match or mismatch of internal image with external image messages? Can they ‘have’ their own image preferences? I assume they can be programmed with preferences if these can be adequately represented), but whose preferences would they be? Can they be programmed to ‘design’ new imagery against which to evaluate their environment? How? According to what criteria? And finally, should it not be clear that any robot lacking such capabilities but acting in the environment IS representing an image? Which may just be so ‘poor’ (in the sense of undefined) that we don’t even want to acknowledge it as such?

A related, equally interesting and potentially controversial issue is that of power. Being able to act according to a chosen ‘different’ image requires some degree of power: empowerment; the ability to creatively design and act upon new images guiding life even more so. The plans and activities arising from such efforts will likely influence, get in the way of the plans of other entities — human or otherwise. What provisions should be built into a being (human or otherwise) to ‘responsibly’ deal with the resulting conflicts? Just giving robots abilities commensurate with their mechanical power (that exceeds those of humans, which is the reason for their being designed) may not be enough. Is responsibility an emotion?

Precipitous exponential growth

Published April 17, 2009 Uncategorized Leave a Comment
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The Black Swan Neck of the Exponential Growth Curve

One of the conundrums behind the current financial crisis is the puzzle concerning the exponential growth curve. Everybody looking at such a curve will concede that its application to many economic phenomena is unrealistic and unsustainable in the long run. For example, let’s assume a bank is offering an investor a 5% interest rate on a large deposit, say $1M. So in a year, the account will have $1.05M, the year after that $1. 1M, in three years $1.016M, and so on. Understanding this principle of compound interest is widely held to be one of the necessary aspects of basic financial intelligence.

Now the bank, in order to live up to its promise of paying back the deposit with interest, will have to earn that interest, plus, of course its own profit on doing so, from other people, who are borrowing money from the bank. So it must lend money at an interest rate that necessarily must be higher than the original 5%. If is only 1% more, the interest rate at which the ‘economy’ of the combined other borrowers must ‘grow’ per period, has to be at least 6%, just to be able to pay back the loans. But of course these people are doing that to make profit of their own as well, so that profit rate will have to be added to the necessary growth of the economy as a whole. This applies to every segment of that economy. But we also know that there are certain entities and resources in the economy that are inherently limited: the amount of land, or water, for example. Even to expect the production of food to grow at the same exponential rate year after year is patently impossible and unrealistic. This measn that in order to remain a responsibly viable participant in the economy, ( that is, for larger entities, to be acceptable investment vehicles on Wall Street) these sectors of the economy must raise their prices so as to ‘produce’ the expected growth rate, at least as much as is needed to cover the difference between the overall expected growth rate and the actual growth rate of their porduction. In other words, inflation. The expected , predicted inflation rate now becomes a factor in the interest rate expectation of our original $1M investor: the interest rate must rise to also cover inflation, otherwise such an investment would be less preferable that to spend the money on goods etc. at today’s prices. This means, that for an economy functioning according to these principles, a steady rise of inflation is a necessity. It is held in check only by the fact that there will be a number of ‘losers’ in the process, whose losses reduce the required rate of inflation. The regrettable fact of there having to be such losers is glossed over by the mantra that they ‘deserve’ this fate by being less industrious, or inventive, or sufficiently smart in marketing their services — all aspects that detract from the question of the true value of whatever they contribute. It is also demonstrably advantageous for the ‘winners’ or would-be-winners in this process to ever so subtly misprepresent the value of their ‘new, improved’ contributions and to persuade people that they realy really do need these things, and even to arrange legal and regulatory conditions inn favor of their products and services, by appropriately massaging the egos and pocketbooks of legislators.

The question — apart from those regarding fairness and justice and ethics, that may be dismissed with the old nugget of ‘buyer beware’ — is: why do serious economists and government officials incurring public debt in the expectation that future growth will pay for its expenditures, still continue to rely on the exponential growth expectation as a guide to policy? Why is it that even the highest experts profess to surprise as to that and how fast the collapse was happening — the prime example of a ‘black swan’ event that nobody expected?

Could it be that the answer may be found in the human tendency to consider only short term implications of policies and tactics? This is institutionalized in form of the common habit in the financial world, of evaluating economic performance (and stock market attractiveness, etc.) according to quarterly profit growth. What this does to the analyst (who ought to know better) is this:

Instead of the dizzying steep grade of an extended exponential growth curve after a number of time periods, it allows the analyst to ‘start from zero’ again each period: the value of the end of the previous period is moved to the point of origin in the new tracking chart, and the steepness of the curve looks perfectly benign: 5%, 6%, etc.: all close enough to the ‘normal’ horizontal steady state to allay any acrophobic fears. It hides the fact that one is already high up on the curve, leaning over precipitously from the vertical so as to perceive the current point as the horizontal starting point. This delusion can go on only for so long, of course: sooner or later, the perspective so gained will have to reveal itself as unsustainable, because leaning over so far from the safe true horizontal as to cause the viewer to lose all sense of what’s up or down, and lose balance. Followed by a sobering fall.

It would be satisfactory to be able to identify some culprits or villains in these machinations, to be appropriately pilloried in the public devastated marketplace. This would be missing the point, however. All indications are that just about everybody honestly believed in the appropriateness, validity and fairness of adopting this perspective of continued growth, of interest and profit, — from the lowliest holder of a measly savings account to the top managers on global banks, and government officials at all levels. An indication of this universally shared misconception is the current rash of government bailouts of the largest investment and insurance entities, which must be realistically seen as just moving the economy back to some previous point on the curve, one that wasn’t as close to the tipping point as to scare people from more and more lending and borrowing. It is a strategy that, given the mechanics of exponential growth, must inevitably, soone or later result in the same catastrophic collapse. Mitigating the progress toward such collapse by reining in certain accelerating follies — such as the selling and reselling of loans many times over (each time expecting more interest and profit, to the point where the combined earning expectation vastly exceeded even modest predictions of the actual growth of the real economy that ultimmately would have to pay for all those profits) will only slow down the inevitable repetition of the crisis.

Does the only realistic hope, as this little thought experiment suggests, for salvaging the economy lie in a fundamental reorientation of the basic expectations relative to growth in the economic system? The mantra of growth at any cost must give way to a more meaningful measure of the viability of economic policies. And the real basis for the widespread pessimism with respect to such a reorientation is that as far as can be seen in the public discourse, nobody — in the financing system or in government, nor in the media — is even raising this crucial question.

Abbé Boulah He Is Looking at the Stimulated Outrage

Published April 15, 2009 Uncategorized Leave a Comment

Abbé Boulah He Is Looking at the Stimulated Outrage at the Bank and AIG Bailouts and Bonuses.

And wonders mightlily at the number of split minds He can harbor about all this. For: yes, it does gall the peace-and-justice-loving soul to contemplate the injustice of big bonuses and payments to people whose foolish actions (or so it seems) have caused the downfall of the mighty institutions, and the loss of employment of untold workers not only in their own companies but in many other segments of the economy. It’s just not fair. Even though He does understand the alleged legal basis of such decisions, there being contracts involved that must be honored — the question of whether such contracts also would have to be honored if the people involved were also lai off? He is a bit more mystified at the argument that these people, being so knowledgeable about how they maneuvered the company into the current trouble, are so very much needed to get out of it: without any acknowledgement of just what the mistakes were or what new improved principles are now to be followed? Just get the money flowing again? He is not totally without understanding for those folks and even a smidgeon of compassion: they were faithfully following the glorious tenets of free enterprise and profit-maximizing they had been taught: growth, at all cost, beating the competition, even playing some little devious games with the accounting and promotion policies — after all, buyer beware, — but invest with confidence even if the fund managers turned out to be confidence men…
He does shake His head in incomprehension at the contradictory arguments regarding regulation: that is was the lack of regulation that allowed the misconduct, that the brave Republicans who even warned of such lack of regulation when the Democrats were — finally — beginning to cave in to the sustained onslaugth of Reaganesque (unsustainable) deregulation fervor, finally conceded that business was suffering from too much regulation. Huh? and Treble Huh? And He admits to being at a total loss when pondering the question why the role of beliefs in fundamental mantras and the role of power in all these events is not even brought up in any of the startling discussion revelations of having told us so long ago and we just didn’t pay no tuition? Such as the issue of growth. Has there been no MBA or economics professor ever showing these bonus-prone folks an exponential growth curve? And ever so slyly encouraging a question as to where that curve would end, if allowed to continue? But of course, in a culture of quarterly profit-orientation, such questions would be utterly incomprehensible. So if anyone in the employment of the institutions in question were to even contemplate questions of this nature, this had to be seen as potentially damaging to said quarterly profit growth but tendentially treasonous — heretical to the high principles of free trade and enterprise proclaimed by prophets like Milton Friedman? No, Abbé Boulah cannot really blame these people; the combined peer pressure and profit prospect would have been too much to resist for even the most virtuous of free traders. Nor can he really blame the government officials who, along with the much lower incomes than their former classmates now in the banking and insurance industries, finally caved in to incessant drum of demands that governments be run like a business, and accordingly adopted strategies akin to those so successfully demonstrated in business by hostile take-overs financed by future debt of the companies taken over: massive debt-financing of all kinds of government programs and wars, and now bank bailouts, relying on the very continued future growth that just had proven elusive in the business world?

Or regarding the role of power: having endured for decades the lamentations of the business leaders as to the deplorable temptations of power afflicting government leaders, He wonders why even timid questions about such afflictions were never raised about leaders in the business world? Or why the valiant efforts of the Constitution-framers to contain government power — by means of checks and balances, division of government into its various branches, time limits of appointments and the like, were not also applied to the business segment of the economy: because they still did not work well enough?

Left to ponder all these questions without guidance from either the business, government, or religious leaders much less the so-called free press that also has been subjected to the iron rule of Murdochian quarterly profits and line-toeing, Abbé Boulah is playing in His sandbox with his own heretical suspicions:

What if the measure of performance of both government and business were changed to something like ‘maximizing opportunity’ or maximizing occasion (i.e. life event) opportunity quality (for citizens and consumers, rather than pecuniary profit? To include equilibrium instead of growth? What if the marginal interest and profit rates were inverted from their current shapes all rising with higher deposits or investments (some even unsustainably exponentially?) to shapes of declining marginal increase as investments and sales volume increases? What if budgets of governments were not established in terms of dollar amounts but as percentages of whatever revenues will actually be received? What if power were recognized as just another human need, even addiction, for which those who wish to indulge in it would be asked to pay, rather that having all of us pay for it? With decisions likely to affect large numbers of people requiring a ‘deposit’ which will be forfeited if the decision turns out poorly, and a bonus if it succeeds — but only after establishing success? What if there were a ‘dual’ economic system? One public, in which everybody is a member — owner-employee — by virtue of being a citizen, and working in it for nominal wages or credits on common purpose projects that increase opportunity for everybody (infrastructure). The other private enterprise, with everybody encouraged to work there according to the ‘free trade’ and ‘free enterprise’ principles and higher earnings? But on a flexible sliding time scale– so that if either sector runs into trouble (as in the current housing-construction-financing crisis — people’s involvement in one or the other would be automatically adjusted, thus avoiding the massive layoffs that merely increase the problem? That would free the enterprise part from all kinds of burdensome paperwork, since basic taxes and insurance would be done by the public sector? (People of course being able to buy enhancements on the free market for other-than-basic coverage.) What if people would be able to indicate on their election ballots how much, in percent, of their taxes they would like to see designated for what programs and purposes?

Ah well. Too many questions and possibilities. He just wishes there were somebody He could discuss at least some of these with, over a glass of sustainably priced wine?

Bog-Hubert’s Cousin’s Solution

Published February 3, 2009 Uncategorized Leave a Comment
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Bog-Hubert’s Black Sheep Cousin (some friends Abbé Boulah is hanging out with, it really makes you to wonder sometimes…) made this prediction — or suggestion? — in the Fog Island Tavern:

“Hey folks, let’s all take our stimulus money, buy some cheap property in one of those central American places they keep advertising, where we can live like lords on the cheap. Meanwhile, we’ll just open the borders, — save a ton of money — give everybody who wants to come in temporary residence for ten or fifteen or twenty years, whatever it will take for them to do the work, fix this country up, and pay the taxes that are needed to pay off the federal debt. Then we give’m the Central American places back — by then we’ll have screwed them up just like we did the Florida and California Coast — and move back…”

Did we see the senator in the tavern slink off with a very thoughtful frown on his face…?

Economic stimulus

Published February 3, 2009 Uncategorized Leave a Comment
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The discussion for and against the ‘new’ economic stimulus package is heating up in a somewhat disturbing pattern that does not bode well for the concerted, cooperative efforts that will be needed to overcome the crisis. The positions are exaggerated and simplified to the degree of caricature, yet not conducive to merriment but rather increasing divisiveness: shrill accusations by supporters, that opponents ignore the plight of those affected, thereby making things worse by delaying action, countered by the other side with wild statements about the measures to be preparations for the wholesale deliverance of the country to socialism, being full of pork, doing nothing to solve the problem in the long run, etc.

Trying to sort out some of the issues, I have a few questions.

Is anybody fundamentally against the notion that there is a problem and that something needs to be done about it?

Is anybody opposed to the notion that there is a need for quick action? But that whatever action is taken, the remedy will have to be sustainable in the long term?

I don’t perceive that there is much disagreement there. So the contentious issues are about specifics. Some of these, about which I think there are legitimate questions, are :

1. Are the funds of the package going to the ‘right’ people and groups?
(‘Right’ as in ensuring the desired effect, as well as: group ‘deserving’ or ‘undeserving’ — e.g. because they may be the ones ‘responsible’ for the problem)

2. Will the funds be used for the appropriate activities, projects, programs?
(Other versions of this question will ask: Is there too much ‘pork’ in the package? And who will benefit versus who will suffer?)

3. Can and will the proper use of funds be effectively monitored?

4. Will the proposed measures ‘gain traction’ fast enough to prevent serious
damage until they do?

5. What are the expectations about how those funds
(which must be borrowed) can and will be repaid?
By whom? Over what period of time? At what cost?
Are those expectations reliable? realistic?

6. Will the package, and the programs to be funded with it, result in effective long term recovery? Or just in short term ‘band-aid’ fixes that

7. Are there viable alternatives to the proposed measures? What are they?
And are they being discussed? Considered? scrutinized?

It is interesting to note that so much of the ‘discussion’ is being conducted in rather simplifying and therefore divisive terms, and drawing from historical events that may be considered not entirely applicable to the current situation. The argument about the expected effectiveness, for example, uses almost exclusively material form the 1930’s depression, with one side claiming that the ‘New Deal’ programs kept the country afloat, saved the lives of millions, and produced infrastructure that remained useful for many years, while the other contends that the taxation necessitated by the government spending unnecessarily prolonged the crisis. This is usually combined with the simplistic ‘small government’, individual freedom and personal responsibility versus ‘big (bad) government and its ‘tax-and spend’ proclivities, welfare mothers and dependence (i.e. loss of freedom) on government handouts slogans. It can be argued, with ample recent evidence, that the reality of the current situation in many ways represents an effective inversion of many of these notions. So there is a legitimate need for in-depth scrutiny of these questions.

There are some serious questions that have not been raised, to my knowledge, much less received any in-depth discussion (I don’t count the screams about ‘turning the country over to socialism’ which has been ‘proven to fail everywhere esp. in the demise of the USSR, nor on the other side, the gleeful or anxious cries about the imminent ‘demise of capitalism’ as evidenced by its failure to solve the world’s problems since the collapse of socialism, and its recent crisis, as serious discussion). These are questions about the underlying structural reasons and mechanisms for the failures of both, that should be examined, remedied, or replaced with something better.

8. One of these issues is the effect of power in large systems. It applies to both forms of socio-political governance as well as large ‘private enterprise’ entities. It is ironic that defenders of US capitalism boast of the US being able to send folks to the moon but don’t seem to credit Americans with being able to develop a viable government. Some respectable efforts have been made to control and limit the unconstrained abuse of power in ‘democratic’ forms of government (term limits, checks and balances between several branches of government), which arguably are in need of improvement. The possibility that temptations to abuse of power also can occur in private enterprise, especially when these grow to near monopoly and global dimensions, has not been effectively discussed, except with sanctimonious deference to the power of shareholders and the ‘invisible hand’ of the markets as the only needed controls, on one side, and denigrations of ‘big corporations’ pointing to the evidence of the white collar Enron-style crime on the other. Which are dismissed by the defenders of capitalism as just the misdeeds of a few ‘bad apples’ which are justly being prosecuted — “see, they are serving jail time…” And therefore do not need consideration of structural change.

(I have discussed the relationship between freedom and power elsewhere, the temptation to realize freedom made possible by power (empowerment) consisting precisely in the ability to break or bend the rules: am I truly ‘free’ if I have to abide by the rules?)

9. Another fundamental question that also is not part of the current discussion is the role of growth in the economy. It is almost as impossible to even raise the question as it is to question motherhood and apple pie: the unquestioned mantra of governmental economics from the smallest municipalities to international trade and finance. It is manifested in the phenomenon of compound interest, and the associated expectation of profit and return on investment at all levels of economic activity. The concept, in its basic form as taught in the schools, is hard to argue with — the various warnings and prohibitions in religions throughout history notwithstanding. Did they know something we have forgotten? Might there be some good reasons for rethinking the way we deal with this?

One reason might be the indiscriminate application of growth-oriented policy (and growth-based criteria for economic decisions) to areas that are meaningfully capable of growth, and to resources that cannot grow, alike. The fact that some resources are limited by nature — land, shorelines, fresh water, even the fish in the ocean — but are treated just like phenomena that can more easily accommodate indefinite growth (might even those have some limits?) will result in imbalances in the economic system, to say the very least.

Another reason, I submit, might be the fact that the way growth and compound interest operate in the economic system will inevitably result in systemic shift in income and wealth distribution over time — regardless or even in conflict with the actual merit, productivity, innovation and hard work. It is no secret that small investment — the savings accounts of the low-income worker — will earn interest at very low rates in the banking systems of most countries today. Even if one were to invest $1000,- and $100,000 at the same interest rate, the ratio of the resulting fortunes after ten or twenty years will be quite disproprotionate. But in reality, the higher the deposits, the higher the earnings rate. So without any controls and assuming equal ‘merit’ of depositors, the one starting with the higher deposit will gain an ever-increasing advantage over the small investor.

To then suggest that e.g. taxes diminishing this handicap amount to ‘socialistic redistribution of wealth and the undisciplined, lazy masses just sponging off the rich’ is sounding a bit disingenuous. To attack institutions of ‘insurance’ such as Social Security or National health insurance ideas as concepts violating the American values of rugged individualism and individual responsibility is no less than adding insult to injury: the idea of insurance is based on the very responsible insight that accidents, illness, other calamities can strike anybody without regard to merit, and that we might reduce the painfulness for anyone hit by such might be lessened by our setting aside small funds that collectively can help out those who have suffered an event. Is this denial of individual responsibility, or the very embodiment of responsible stewardship of our families’ future well-being? By comparison, the notion that there should now be private enterprise agencies who should compete with one another in making profits from this — in effect, making profits from our misfortunes and our efforts to remedy them, this is supposed to be an American virtue and value? And the callousness of my home insurance to whom I have paid insurance premiums for decades, with which they have built gleaming office buildings and paid great CEO benefits and bonuses and parachutes, to suddenly cancel my insurance because they are no longer insuring properties in Florida – that is not just tolerated but praised as responsible business policy — so I should buy their stock for my retirement?

10. There is, finally an aspect to the interest / profit / growth conundrum that arguably has contributed more to the current crisis e.g. in the housing market than the alleged irresponsibility of homeowners buying more home than they can afford, of the few dishonest and even criminal ‘bad apples’ in the mortgage industry. It is the ‘pyramid’ effect of the financing system. Consider the building and financing of a house. Even before it is built, every contractor and subcontractor is taking out loans with their banks, to be able to buy the materials and equipment for their businesses, hire workers, etc. The general contractor, developer or owner takes out a construction loan to pay the contractors as the work is being completed. This means that even before the house is built, the bank will earn its interest — at a slightly higher than usual interest rate since the collateral is ‘just a hole in the ground’. In fact it has already, in, say, a year of construction period, earned, say 10 or 12% of the cost of the house. Then it finances the mortgage proper, with points and fees etc. And starts collecting interest on the owner’s loan. Another 5 or 6% a year. Of course, this may be too much trouble, so it ‘sells’ the mortgage to another company, a mortgage finance entity. The bank wouldn’t do this unless it could make some profit on that, would it? so that gets added to the ‘value’ of the thing it sells to the next higher entity. Which wouldn’t buy it unless they too could make a profit on it: one, by not having to go through the work involved with the initiation of the mortgage that your local bank had to do, but mostly because the mortgage is either so long-term that is expects to get safe income for a long time — income whose ‘present value’ is higher than what it paid for it — or because the mortgage is on whose interest rate can be jacked up in a year or two. If the sale and the expected profit have added another percentage for the bank and some more for the mortgage company, this will be charged as interest to the homeowner. But the owner’s income has not changed at the same rate in the meantime; he can’t pay the new mortgage payment. Fine, we’ll force him to sell the house. Only now so many people have gotten into the same fix that there aren’t enough folks around to buy the house at the price that now should cover all the profits added to it through the trades, plus of course the realtor’s 6% fee for finding a new buyer and organizing the sale. This means that someone is going to take a hit here: prices are forced down, the profit expectations are not met: bailout time. Who is getting blamed? The irresponsible homeowner, the bankers who sold those mortgages to people who couldn’t pay (how could they have foreseen that they would be laid off by their own bank in order to cover its losses?).

The blame game here is missing the point that the expectation of profit at every level was such an intrinsic part of the system that everybody involved had to buy into it. It wasn’t just the few bad apples: at every level, the economic agent had to comply with the requirement that a quarterly profit had to be demonstrated. Otherwise, the company would lose its standing on Wall street, lose its ability to borrow money cheap enough to finance more such deals. The pressure to divest themselves of questionable instruments, leading to the invention of ‘derivatives’ in which nobody could even begin to assess the true value of the basic commodity it represented, became ever greater. One did not have to be a dishonest banker to succumb to it — it was everyday practice, everybody had to play the game — anymore than every defaulting homeowner is an irresponsible bum.

I do not see in the proposed stimulus package nor in the discussion surrounding it much of an attempt to identify much less develop remedies for these intrinsic flaws in the system. I would love to be proven wrong on this; I am afraid that without such fundamental rethinking and corrections, we are just going to see more trouble of the same kind ahead.

Strangers in the Tavern

Published December 2, 2008 Uncategorized Leave a Comment
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The regulars at the counter of the Fog Island Tavern were talking about Abbé Boulah — their mysterious but currently absent friend. Or was he really a friend? His name was often mentioned in their conversations — rambling discussions that roamed wildly across all territories of human knowledge, whether they actually knew much about a given subject or were just speculating or making up stuff. And their tales were spiked with quotations and sayings attributed to him — that often sounded as if they had made them up as well. Or the entire concept of Abbé Boulah. Not that he was portrayed as a man of superior wisdom or intellect, — at least some of these people did not display the reverence one would expect for such a figure. But it seemed that he had a distinctly different perspective on most of the subjects they had discussed — perhaps because of his origin, which was a matter of contention; nobody knew exactly where he was from — or his travels that exceeded that of most of the others. Not even travels by themselves, — some of the regulars had certainly visited more foreign countries. But they had done so as tourists, while Abbé Boulah, it seemed,  had been staying in many places while growing up, or as a refugee, or working for some time in one place or another.

Now the professor was launching a  theory about this.  “He’s a professional stranger. That’s why he likes to hang out here in this Tavern — not a golf course clubhouse, for example.  He’s not a member of the ‘in’ crowd anywhere.

–    “He’s a regular in here”  Renfroe objected.

–    “Yes, but he’s not what you’d call a ‘regular’ regular.”

–    “You don’t make sense, Al” said Renfroe. “How can he not be a regular when he’s a regular?”

–    “He’s a regular in the sense that he comes here quite a bit. And yes, we know him. But he’s still a stranger. I think the reason he feels comfortable here is that it’s a little like a sailor’s tavern in a seaport.”

–    “What difference does that make? A tavern is a tavern.”

–    “Oh, there are differences. Some taverns only accommodate regulars:  the place where ‘everybody knows your name’.  But seaport taverns are different. By definition, there, everybody is a stranger.  Sailors are strangers everywhere. And they seek out places where that’s okay.  Where it’s okay if you don’t know the subtle rules and conventions of the ‘proper’ people in each place,  the subtle clues about the social fabric of ‘society’ there — whether it’s nobility or well-to-do middle class, or a lowly miners or loggers’ community.  You come in without preconceptions about the people you’ll meet, and they have no preconceptions about you.”

–    “Does that mean  there are no rules you need to observe in these places?”

–    “No, no, quite the contrary!  There definitely are rules, things you do and other things you most certainly don’t do. But the rules are very different.  I’m not sure anybody has studied these unwritten rules properly, at least I’m not aware of any such studies.  But we know some of them instinctively, don’t we?”

–    “Do we?  Why don’t you give us some examples!”

–    “Well, some of them are quite obvious, aren’t they?  First of all, you don’t have a ‘regular’ place — you squeeze in wherever there’s room:  you can’t claim a specific territory.  The ‘regular’s table’ — which almost every tavern has, and it ‘s usually quite clear from its shape or position which one it is — that’s not where a stranger sits down when he first comes in. You don’t push anybody…”

–    “Unless you’re already drunk and there’s a crowd of drunken bullies with you…”

–    “Right. Even for those situations, there are unspoken rules, though.  For example, if you really want to settle a disagreement with a fight, you do it outside.  But such people usually are ‘regulars’ — they feel they have some superior rights in a place. Their turf. As a stranger, you don’t insult anybody — because you don’t know who you’re dealing with.  Any discussion or conversation is strictly neutral, nonpartisan:  the weather is the preferred startup subject everywhere because it’s so neutral, you can’t blame anybody for it, even inadvertently.”

–    “Yes, it would be interesting to write up the code of rules of taverns for strangers. But that can’t be why you’re saying Abbé Boulah is a stranger — he’s been here too often for that, hasn’t he? After a while he becomes a regular, won’t he?”

–    “No, I think you’re right. He is kinda strange sometimes” said Renfroe. “Not mean-like or anything, just weird, like he doesn’t have a clue of what’s going on, or he wants to put you on. I can’t tell the difference sometimes.”

–    “Could it be that some of the things people are saying could be understood in many different ways, from his point of view, perhaps they are really understood in different ways in the places he’s been;  so he’s really confused about what somebody is trying to say?  Don’t forget:  he didn’t go to high school with you guys. So all of those high school rituals and jargon and memories you are throwing around, he just doesn’t know what they mean. And then he gets back at you by pretending he’s taking it in some totally different way, like it might be seen in some other place. To make you as confused as you are?”

–    “Are you saying he does that on purpose?”

–    “I’m not sure. Sometimes it feels that way, yes. But I think it’s more of a defense mechanism. Which even can come across as cynical?”

–    “I think you are onto something” said Vodçek from behind the bar, polishing his glasses. “Yes, a stranger is often perceived as a little cynical — having seen many countries and listened to their national hymns, all of which proudly proclaim the unquestioned superiority of their turf and society above all others, he is not sure whether to feel sorry for all those folks and their ignorance or self-imposed blindness,  or for himself for not being able to share their enthusiasm for the patriotic cause.  He has been listening for too long to Georges Brassens singing about ‘les imbéçiles qui sont nés quelque part’ (the imbeciles that are born somewhere) and ‘je suis la mauvaise herbe, braves gens’ (I am the useless garden weed, you proper folks..)  and imagines a tavern where he could hear Georges sing. But even there, he would remain a stranger. That attitude makes him avoid engagement.  He will offer comments, advice, however tentative and noncommittal, but no commitment to place, cause, group. We’ll be gone soon, he thinks, don’t count on any long-term obligations, let’s just focus on making the present tolerable. Enjoy a little company before heading out again into solitude.

–    “He has made many efforts to become a part of something, some cause, some community. But every time something happened that set him apart:  some trace of an accent, some dumb question about a stupid idea that should have been accepted unquestioned, even little proposals for improvement that were just a little too unusual — and therefore strange, even though nobody could argue their merit — it’s just that they, well didn’t quite fit.  So he is making a career of it.”

–    “But that is really a form of chickening out, isn’t it?  Is that what he does?

–    “It can be seen that way. And the stranger knows this: the despicable refusal to make a commitment, to take responsibility for something. But it’s also a form of protection. The ability to not understand, or to pretend to not understand, lets him escape the blunders of the respective community whose strength of common purpose, their strength in numbers, blinds them to the stupidity of their aims. And he tries to  pre-empt the inevitable rejection that is sure to follow any attempt at joining such a cause for the sake of joining: it will be perceived as fraudulent, as insincere, even when the stranger has persuaded himself that this time, he will give it his best to become one of them.

–    “So the tavern where strangers can meet is where he feels comfortable. He will always feel awkward in formal occasions of any particular place:  he will not know the accepted manners and will commit many a faux-pas, and be embarrassed by this. He will not know the rituals these people engaged in during their high school years. An all this will inevitably reveal him as a stranger, as someone not to be completely trusted.”

–    “You are right; Now that I think about it,  I can’t really see Abbé Boulah at a black tie benefit for all the hi-falutin’ bigwigs in the country club. No matter how much they act as down-to-earth good ol’ boys.”

–    “No, Renfroe, the place for the stranger is the lowly tavern where the sailors come in to get drunk.  They drink to forget their homesickness — or to forget that the home they are pining for, also long ago has rejected them as strangers. The strangers will never talk about this openly, but they will sense and understand it as the undercurrent of all the boisterous stories they tell each other.”  Vodçek eyed his customers while polishing his glasses. “And I have heard some stories…”  He trailed off, lost in memories.

–    Then he recovered from his reveries, and concluded:  “The best tavern is the one run by somebody who is himself a stranger and who understands this. He understands that all these strangers now have several places for which they are homesick, and that these places never really were their home:  what they are homesick for are the dreams they once had that they might be at home there. Some of the drinks he serves are meant to vaguely remind them of those places. Or dreams.”

–    “You almost make me feel sorry for these folks, like they are victims of some unjust fate or something — but aren’t they really being that way intentionally?  Tricksters, stirring up trouble, meddling where they have no business getting involved?

–    “Perhaps they serve an important larger purpose — like the old court jesters:  making you look at things differently, questioning your assumptions, poking fun at your serious pompous, pretentious truths and principles?  Or just telling us not to take ourselves so seriously? “

–    “I’m not sure that’s Abbé Boulah, really — that last one reminds me more of our friend Bog-Hubert here, eh, Vodçek?”

–    “You’re right, Bog-Hubert doesn’t take things too seriously.”

–    “Hey,  speak for yourself, don’t put me in those labeled boxes.”

–    “Sorry, Bog-Hubert, don’t take it seriously.  But Abbé Boulah is serious, at least at some time. Too serious, often making people uncomfortable in the process.  Bog-Hubert does that too, but in a different way, at least he makes us laugh at him, and ourselves.  With Abbé Boulah, you never really know whether he’s serious or just trying to be funny like Bog-Hubert.”

–    “Oh yes, he’s serious most of the time, but he’s learning to use jest and humor for his serious purposes, and secretly laughing at himself all the while as he realizes how futile it all is.”

–    “Are you saying he thinks it’s futile, Bog-Hubert? You know him better than most of us? “

–    “Oh yeah. But he can’t let it go. Me, I gave up really trying to save the world long time ago. Now I just try to have a good time, and maybe helping others have a good time too, even if they have to be tricked into it.  But Abbé Boulah, I think he’s still like that old mythical Greek guy rolling the boulder up the hill.”

–    “You mean Sisyphus? “

–    “Right. Sisyphus, that’s the one. But Abbé Boulah, he’s laughing his head off when the boulder rolls down, scattering the goats and scaring the living daylight out of the pompous pathetic peripathetics strolling up the hillside paths admiring the view from above.  Before he goes down to roll it up again.”

Initiatives to ‘save the world’

Published November 7, 2008 Uncategorized Leave a Comment

Having gotten intrigued by the expression of all the well-intentioned goals of the “Global Marshall Plan” initiative — among other such efforts I looked at — I tried to investigate the basic charter and principles, organizational, operating and decision-making structure, only to find a somewhat confusing discussion about how that initiative should define itself and its mission. This is indicative of the essence of the problem: an organization that aims at helping the world overcome its problems gets bogged down in its own operating principles. Many concepts and terms that may be familiar to Europeans were mystifying to me, and the intentions expressed raised more questions in me than they answered. This is an attempt to sort out some of these questions, so as to ask them in a clearer, more specific way that might help develop more specific and useful answers.

Initiatives such as this one seem to be fueled by a sincere sense of concern about existing conditions and their extrapolation into the future, perhaps outrage or guilt, or both, about “our” (whoever the “we” might be) role in letting things deteriorate to this level of danger or misery.

They then appear to make some assumptions, consciously or unconsciously taken for granted:

– that some organized effort (‘initiative’) might be able to help remedy the problems,

– that these efforts should be guided by a ‘mission’, usually expressed in terms of the absence of the problems (e.g. eliminate hunger, disease, war, unfair economic conditions, injustice);

– that there are (known? already available or easy-to-perfect?) remedies: agreements, tools, forms of organization, actions, arrangements, or at least articles of good faith to which all powers of good faith should subscribe, that would result in elimination fo the problems, if accepted / adopted and applied;

– that the initiative might be able to achieve their adoption, by its activities supported by volunteer work and donations of funds, by then somehow inducing the actual decision-making entities (e.g govenrments) to adopt the respective policies and implement corresponding programs.

What is not or only rarely “made very explicit in such mission statements are specific answers, for example:

1. What, specifically, would these measures / remedies and activities be?

2. What is the evidence that they would be ‘superior’ (a claim made e.g. about the proposed “Eco-social Market Economy” or more preferable, efficient as remedies) than existing arrangements? (Beyond the well- intentioned claims of wanting to remedy problems?)

3. What are the reasons these arrangements have not been adopted / implemented yet (if they are so preferable)? What are the forces working against this?

4. What steps / actions are being considered to overcome such opposing forces? And the convictions about their superiority?

5. How can their ‘global’ implementation be achieved?
– through a ‘global treaty’? (Signed by whom? what if the treaty partners are just those opposing forces now preventing their adoption?)
– through decisions / decrees of a ‘global government’ of some kind? Global comprehensive (‘imposed?) implementation?
– by incremental introduction — either global but selective implementation on some partial aspect, to demonstrate both feasibility and desirability? If so: what aspect? How?
or ‘full / comprehensible’ implementation in a selected territory or place?

6. Regarding the ‘treaty’ approach (as in the ‘Global Marshall Plan’):
How would violations of the treaty agreements be dealt with? Sanctions? Imposed by what entity (that must be more powerful than any of the partner entities to be able to enforce them?

7 What would keep such a superior treaty-enforcement entity from falling victim to abuse of its power?

These questions seem to make it clear that some central mechanisms that would guarantee the success of such an initiative and world order simply are not available / worked out yet. Just relying on good intentions all around is clearly not sufficient; the concepts of what is fair, equitable, just, sustainable, culturally and spiritually acceptable are so different that they cannot be relied upon as conflict-resolution devices, being themselves the very sources of conflict. There is, to my knowledge, no convincing historical evidence for a central all-powerful government being immune to incompetence, flawed understanding of the problems they try to solve, insufficient information, bureaucratic calcification, or the temptations of abuse of power, — all of which would make resulting mistakes the more catastrophic, the larger, more powerful and all-encompassing that entity. This is why it is widely and understandably viewed with some suspicion.

For these reasons, I suggest that such efforts should focus much more specifically on finding and developing mechanisms for overcoming these fundamental obstacles. For example: the refinement of the concept of ‘balance of powers’ (checks and balances) — so far one of the most promising governance ideas humanity has produced, but which is still not working well enough; — the issue of whether such a global organization should unquestionably be based on traditional arrangement such as territorially defined treaty partners (‘nations’ etc.) especially when current globalization trends already show non-territorial forces and networks overlaying and overpowering the nation-based organizational structures. Or the primitive concept of democracy based on majority voting either by territorially defined groups or their representatives, also determined by majority voting (which by definition overpowers the minority).
Most of all, it would seem essential to develop better forms of ‘automatic’ triggering of sanctions for breaking agreements: mechanisms (to be agreed upon together with the respective treaty provisions) that automatically kick in upon, and triggered by, an act of violation of a treaty agreement. Such arrangements would obviate one of the major ‘justifications’ for a central all-powerful world government.

There are available embryonic suggestions for such solutions: these should be investigated, developed, discussed and tested, as the priority concerns of such organizations. Their current — apparent — reliance on existing organizations that currently are seen by many as not only incapable of dealing with the problems but even as contributing to them — is worrisome.

Some might consider these ideas as much wishful thinking as the reliance on universal good will to solve the world’s problems. But shouldn’t they then show us some alternative approaches we could discuss, refine, and get behind?

Use of NLP and hypnosis in campaign speeches?

Published November 2, 2008 Uncategorized Leave a Comment
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On a discussion forum, I ran into a post backed up by an article suggesting that Obama is using devious ‘secret’ Neuro-Linguistic Programming and hypnosis tricks in his speeches to induce listeners to vote for him and accept his hidden messages as absolute truth by interfering or disabling their critical reasoning faculties. This created a firestorm of furious responses from Obama supporters who dismissed the post and article as mere mean right-wing election mudslinging, as well as equally furious counterposts from McCain/Palin supporters. The whole thing raised some interesting questions — which by and large were not explored by the contributors to that discussion, but should be, and led me to begin to investigate this NLP business more carefully. Here are some first thoughts about this.

The election campaigns are for the most part conducted by verbal communication: speeches, attended by live audiences or transmitted through TV, radio, video on the internet.

The effectiveness of the messages communicated depends on:
– the relevance, significance of the content of a message to the intended recipients
– the plausibility of the claims as perceived by the audience;
– the rhetorical force / elegance / quality with which they are pronounced;
– the consistency of the body of claims made by the party or candidate;
– the consistency of the speakers’ body language with the spoken message;
– the consistency of the message with simultaneous visual imagery shown, etc.

The aim of the effort, and its measure of performance, is the willingness of the audience members to engage in the desired action: vote for x, donate time, actions, money for the campaign… etc. (Yell?)

Note that I have nor mentioned ‘truth’ in the above, and for good reason: the truth of claims in the communication seems to matter only to the extent and possibility that the resulting degree of conviction in the audience might be confirmed / strengthened or eroded by subsequent, more convincing claims or counterclaims. A second reason is that the concept of ‘truth’ properly applies only to claims about the reality of the world as it IS, and not to ideas about what it OUGHT to be, in the opinions of speaker and audience.

The concern of any campaigner therefore must focus on using all available means to produce that high degree of conviction in the audience: to have a plausible, consistent body of claims, — content (‘platform’) — with which persuade audiences, to convey that content with high plausibility that is not likely to be counteracted by more plausible counterclaims; to present it with eloquence, to use body language and accompanying imagery consistent with the content.

From what I have been able to find out, the findings of NLP and similar research amount to the following:
Certain presentation devices — such as speed of speech, the sequence in which claims are presented, the context in which a (potentially implausible or controversial) claim is presented, simultaneous gestures or body language — can significantly influence the degree of plausibility of a claim; to gain a degree of acceptance for a claim that is higher than the claim presented by itself would achieve. And, to the chagrin of those of us who are still enamored by the logic and plausibility of arguments and the truth of the claims used in them, they seem to achieve this to a higher degree than the logical, ‘rational’ quality of the content offered.

Strategies using these insights, I am told, and can actually see when I turn on the TV or listen to certain radio stations, are being used on a daily basis by almost any advertisement, be it commercial or political.

This means that any campaign advisor not considering the use of such tools in getting the message across is either incompetent or convinced that the message presented without such tools is strong enough to stand on its own, running the risk, however, of being done in by opponent’s use of them.

So we have to assume that both parties, all candidates, are using these devices, don’t we? And that the campaigns boil down to which side is able to use these tools most effectively?

This is a problem indeed: if the content platform cleverly promoted is not living up to the effectiveness criteria listed above (which may be a partial list; I can’t claim to have studied this long enough), if a flawed policy and platform and a less than competent candidate is portrayed as the more desirable and trustworthy. But we also have to assume that each party / candidate is convinced that their content is worthwhile and their candidate is competent. Under that assumption, each side would be entirely reckless to the point of incompetence if it did NOT use these tools, for they would be risking undeserved defeat by means that are irrelevant to the value of their platform.

Given this consideration and the apparently widespread knowledge and use of these tools (contrary to the claims in the post and article), I don’t think it is plausible to accuse one side or the other of ‘devious use of secret tricks only known to few experts’ etc. And it is then hard to avoid the impression or suspicion that such allegations are merely a part of the opposing side’s strategy of trying to cast wholesale doubt on the entire content of the accused side — even if such suspicions are not justified.

But a worse problem would arise if the tools were used to create a sense of confidence in a candidate or platform if that platform is misrepresented — i. e. deceptive: if the actual policies a candidate will pursue are entirely different from those portrayed as the platform. (Such as the elder Bush’s ‘read my lips’ promise that was later broken — if breaking the promise had actually been his intention from the start, which probably is not a fair claim.) And are we not hearing various clamors of this kind?

If such a claim is accurate, this would of course represent a quite devastating attack on a candidate or party: The candidate would be revealed as a liar, deceiver, a demagogue of the worst kind for trying to persuade the audience to vote for something they don’t ‘really’ support. Even worse, for doing such evil things with secret devious tricks and hypnosis. And though ol’ Bob Dylan sang “you think you know what you want, but I know what you need” and thereby should have planted a seed of suspicion about such claims: I can, without batting an eyelid, claim that all of you really want the TRUTH, and have this claim accepted by all, as claiming that you REALLY just want to be be confirmed in whatever deception you are stuck in: your furious denials just go to show… So it isn’t that easy, is it? Howdo we back up claims to the effect that what someone says is not what they ‘really’ believe?

The trouble is that such claims about policy deceptions, because they are about future developments, are almost impossible to back up with factual and logical evidence. They are therefore also extremely difficult to counteract, whether accurate or not. And if such claims themselves are promoted using those very tools and tricks, as effective producers of degrees of plausibility and belief in the respective claims, then the deviousness is much more easily spread around than the wealth Obama wants to ‘redistribute’.

My point is: this is a serious problem. And we can get a lot of perverse satisfaction from complaining about it, whichever ‘side’ we happen to be on. What I think would be more in line with the intellectual claims of this group would be to start looking for and working on remedies for it. For example: arrangements for displaying claims made in campaigns in such a way as to minimize the effect of persuasion tools unrelated to their content. Techniques for carrying out policy discussions / debates in ways that more systematically and transparently reveal how we evaluate arguments, identify the points of agreement, disagreement, or lack of adequate information, as well as procedural agreements to not just decide policies and plans by vote or decree but by modifying them until acceptable by even the people who now are screaming at each other and think they can influence destiny by stealing each others’ campaign signs.

The election may be over on Tuesday (though living in Florida, I don’t know if I want to bet on that…) But the real work on the above problems is just beginning.

Improving the political discourse

Published October 29, 2008 Uncategorized Leave a Comment

Improving the political discourse:  Clarifying the meaning of ‘weighing the pros and cons’:  an innovative tool for the political discourse.

How often have we heard the sanctimonious assurances from ‘people in charge’ to ‘carefully weigh the pros and cons’ of controversial proposals and decisions?  But has anybody ever explained just what that means, and how it is or should be done?  Done in some, well perhaps somewhat systematic but above all transparent manner?

The closest helpful advice I know of is still Ben Franklin’s suggestion to write the pros and cons in separate columns on a sheet of paper;  and then to inspect then carefully.  There are some that add to this the idea of assigning numbers — ‘weights’  to each item, and then to add up the numbers. Even the ones among us less guilt-ridden by our failure to apply proper rational reasoning  to this task can see that this  is a rather crude, not very convincing methodology.

There are some plausible reasons why there are no  better explanations  and tools.  One reason is that the pros and cons  used in such planning and policy and political discussions — which are, of course,  arguments — are not very solid arguments, from the point of view of logic.  In fact, logic, the discipline ‘in charge’ of rational reasoning and critical examination of arguments, has all but ignored these arguments and neglected to offer useful tools to evaluate them.  This is because they are ‘inconclusive’ at best, not like syllogisms which guarantee a true conclusion if all their premises are true.  And ‘true or false’  does not really apply to the ‘ought-statements involved, either.  This neglect  seems rather strange, since arguably, humanity argues at least as much about what we ought to do, or more, than about the questions of ‘true insight’ in the way the world IS, that Aristotle claimed as people’s main knowledge quest.

This could be part of the explanation for the strange and confusing state of the political discourse we witness today:  in part reduced to extremely simplified  brief ‘sound-bites’ and slogans of sometimes reassuring but more often inflammatory nature, and in part ornate rhetoric, at best inspiring but mostly equally inflammatory, and not because of its superior reasoning but often merely due to its choice of loaded words.

The promise of help I am proposing comes, strangely enough, not from the discipline of logic or its newer relatives, nor from political science, but from architecture and planning. First developed in my obscure dissertation about  the assessment of design arguments, and only later applied to general planning and policy-making and political issues, an approach to the analysis of the ‘standard planning argument’ and its premises and suggestions for their evaluation is now described in my little book “The Fog Island Argument”. It presents the ideas in the form of a tavern conversation among several strange customers, explores what the planning and political discourse and planning process might be like with this approach as its core element, and proposes a course of studies of the resulting planning problems as part of a general studies education.

The main suggestions involve the following:  A discourse with broad participation  by all people affected by a proposed plan or measure, invited to contribute pros and cons. A concise abbreviated version of these arguments in something like the form  “Plan x should be adopted, because implementing it will result in consequence y, and y is desirable”, perhaps a qualified versions such as “X ought to be  done because under conditions c it will produce y;  these conditions c are present, and y is desirable”. The listing of these condensed arguments is displayed in an appropriate format for overview of the entire spectrum of pros and cons, supported by visual issue and argument maps. The participants then assign a plausibility judgment,  on a scale of +1 to -1, and a weight of relative importance to the ‘ought statements y . For each argument, an argument plausibility measure is derived from all premise plausibilities, and an argument weight by combining this plausibility score with the weight of the respective goal or objective. The value of this approach is seen less in the possibility of obtaining some overall plausibility score. In fact, I warn against using such a measure as a decision criterion not only because all these judgments are, of course, subjective assessments, but because the discourse is also inherently incomplete — there is no guarantee that all pertinent concerns are actually articulated and brought into the discussion. Rather, the analysis of the plausibility and weight scores can give useful indications about where the crucial disagreements are located, where more information and debate is needed to settle issues.

Far from claiming the approach to be a panacea for the improvement of the political discourse, the proposed ideas are offered for discussion and more research — the book concludes with a tentative research agenda. The questions posed for discussion include, for example: what are the basic mutual agreements the participants must enter for constructive, cooperative planning? (An important issue merely raised but not discussed in detail is that of appropriate sanctions for violations of those agreements). To what extent must the design of the planning process be considered an integral part of the planning task, and as such equally subject to design?

More detail and pdf  files of the book (which can of course be obtained from  my web site, fromXlibris, or the usual distributors) are available upon request. My question and hope is to find others interested in and working on these problems, and engage in discussions that can further the development of better solutions.

Thorbjoern Mann
http://www.aboutdesigntime.com
thormann@nettally.com

Abbé Boulah Losing Sleep Over Signing Statements

Published October 19, 2008 Uncategorized Leave a Comment
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Abbé Boulah He Has Another Sleepless Night:

Having fruitlessly pondered away his precious slumber with the question whether or not a president should be considered to have broken laws he signed but for which he wrote a ‘signing statement’ saying that he won’t be bound by the letter of that law — in fact that he should have vetoed it if he doesn’t intend to honor it — he foolishly began to ponder away the very next night,  wondering whether a new president ‘inherits’ the law with the signing statement: does a case in which the previous president ignored the law, in accordance with the signing statement now become a precedent for how to interpret the law, or does the signing statement vanish with the departure of the previous president?  Or is the law as written and signed (without the reservations of the signing statement) now  really the law?

Can a person or entity adversely affected by the law as applied according to the signing statement appeal the case upon the new president taking office? What if the next president agrees with the previous signing statement:  can he just tacitly accept the law as interpreted by his predecessor’s signing statement, or does he have to write his own signing statement? Could he do that for all the laws on the books?  Because why limit that to the laws for which his predecessor signed a signing statement?

What if  signing statements are really instances of violating the law, but the next president pardons his predecessor: are the signing opinions still in force? Or can they be appealed and reversed? Is this whole thing just a conspiracy to keep the courts occupied and too busy to settle the really important issues?

And finally:  Given these questions: how can the president — or the candidates — sleep at night?  Should the ability to sleep at night in the face of this conundrum be considered a qualification for the office? Should someone who can sleep in spite of it be considered conscientious enough to hold the highest office? Or should continual conscientious sleeplessness because of it disqualify a candidate?

And why are the mainstream media as well as certain non-mainstream talk show hosts so suspiciously silent on this question? What are they covering up?  By all the dried ink in all the signing statement signing pens in the Oval Office!

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