Critical Exponent

  It is disturbing to see so many folks paying obeisance to Donald Trump as he prepares to re-ascend to the presidency. To some extent, it’s understandable: Trump’s relationships are transactional, and his stance on an issue at a given moment appears to be dictated largely by his then-views of the agents (people, companies) involved. Given this, it seems only common sense to get on his good side by appeals to his vanity, so as to avoid incurring his wrath and becoming a target of his policies. This might arguably be considered ethical, even, if the agents truly believe what’s being protected will deliver a greater benefit to the world. But this genuflection carries a price: it legitimizes the whole of Trump’s agenda as favorable or at least acceptable, and creates more pressure for similar agents to fall in line or risk being left behind as targets of Trump’s disfavor. It normalizes compliance and weakens resistance at the very least—and, depending on the tributes being paid, could...

When we are attacked, it feels good to respond in kind. It defends us; it signals that we won't take such abuse passively; and it satisfies our desire for retribution. This is possibly, maybe a reasonable strategy when the attack is purely spontaneous—spontaneous in our attacker's eyes as well as our own—and no innocents are drawn into the conflict. An example would be a very young kid hitting a peer to see whether they can do something mischievous like stealing a toy. But many of the attacks we suffer, and which we think are unprovoked, actually have a long backstory and hence justification in the attacker's eyes. Examples range from marital spats to family feuds to political animus to international conflicts to terrorism. Many times what we perceive as an unjustified attack is a bubbling over of long-standing tensions and grievances. How, then, to respond to these attacks that seem justified to our aggressor? It depends on our ultimate goal. If we want to lash out because...

Staring into the distance, she slowly chews her food. Lost in thought, like she can't be bothered with the here and now. Someone walks in; her eyes dart and fixate, silent. She swallows, and opens her mouth distractedly when fed another forkful. I wipe her chin yet again.

In another solution to the equations that define the universe, President Clinton addressed the nation in a somber tone as she grieved the lives lost in the journey to today's announcement that infections were now at a manageable-enough rate to declare the pandemic under control. A semblance of normalcy on the horizon! While there was still discomfort at the draconian extent of the isolation measures that had been enacted, most agreed these had prevented an unfathomable disaster.

Heroes don't always wear capes or get featured on front pages. Sometimes heroes are those who show courage and bear hardship for the common good. They're the ones who reach out to help the powerless or the vulnerable. The ones who do what is right even if no one notices. All of you who are abiding by the coronavirus precautions: thank you. You are facing inconvenience and disruption, uncertainty and isolation, in order to protect those directly at risk and to preserve the health care system so it can continue to respond to emergencies for all of us. You are saving lives and saving society. It is no trivial thing, and you should be proud of your civic duty. Thank you. To all the front-line workers—the doctors and nurses and emergency personnel, the scientists and public health officials: a double thank-you for putting yourselves on the line, for taking very personal risks so that we may all be better off. To all the people who are keeping our infrastructure lights on---the p...

I take issue with Keith Spencer's clear implication in his Salon article that technology has no role in the elections. Two of the three objections he cites to the "computationalist mindset" are actually objections against the use of computers: "First, it enables malfeasance and incompetence.... Pen and paper, on the other hand, are tried-and-true tabulation methods that are not hackable. Second, computers are opaque...A layperson cannot audit the code of an app or website and determine if it is being manipulated." This is missing the point. Technology offers tools which in many cases can be put to good use, but which are just easier to employ in short-sighted or nefarious ways. It is often the human systems which design and use these tools that are not carefully planned and thus enable vulnerabilities, accidents, or malfeasance. The lack of care in establishing these human processes may indeed be partly due to the fetishization of technology as an automatic ...

I was delighted to read Kwame Anthony Appiah's opinion piece in The New York Times , Stonewall and the Myth of Self-Deliverance . He raises a point that I have been making privately for a while: social movements need allies on the inside. If you're willing to seize the reins of power by force, maybe you don't. You simply forcibly remove those who oppress you, and voilà! You're done. Except, of course, it's not that easy. Violent revolution involves collateral damage—including both direct victims of that violence and unforeseen consequences, such as abuses of power, should it succeed. It also requires substantial moral and physical support from a public that may be unwilling to sacrifice whatever comforts it now enjoys (including peace!) for a hypothetical future gain—a support that may be particularly hard to get when that gain is one that directly benefits only a subset of that public. Most modern social movements, at least in the Western world, are not looking...

The metaphor of the earth as a self-contained organism, a metaphor once considered the domain of out-there hippies, has been slowly gaining mainstream acceptance. The idea that Mother Gaia is the emergent system composed of all the organisms and ecosystems on the planet, including us humans and our societies, provides a useful framework for us to grasp the interconnectedness of life on earth, the subtle balances that are necessary to keep the whole system in equilibrium. And indeed, who is to say that the emergent system isn’t more than a metaphor? There is no reason why parts of an emergent system should have an obvious experience of the system as a whole. We should count ourselves lucky that we are self-aware enough to conceive of the possibility. Let’s approach this as a metaphor, at least. Just like an animal has different tissues and organs, Gaia has different species and ecosystems. Just like an animal’s organs must work within well-orchestrated parameters for good health, so t...

In our viciously polarized political climate, we face a steady stream of situations that test our moral values. Many people are moved to reject the status quo and are wondering whether they should just pack up and leave—leave their jobs, leave their neighborhoods, leave their country. It’s tempting, of course. Governments are pursuing actions that are morally repugnant and unethical. Corporations are enacting policies that degrade the common good or refusing to take a stand on political issues that affect their workforce, their consumers, and their communities.  Neighborhoods are witnessing acts of hate in various forms. That there is disagreement at all is not surprising: any time people get together, the group will take actions that not everyone endorses. The these disagreements are in such stark contrast to our deeply held values is a consequence of these particularly divisive times. The question to stay or leave is a natural one that we should  be asking: it speaks to ou...

I've found a use for that little pocket-watch pocket in the front of my jeans. Every time I put them on I try to make sure that I have at least two neatly folded bundles of a few dollar bills each. The reason? So that when I come across a panhandler, I have change ready to give them. Giving money to panhandlers is a habit I've been trying to develop the past few years. Growing up, my training was the complete opposite. My parents thought that the only way to alleviate poverty was via systemic change, through government policies that took care of the needy fairly and equitably, and not through random acts of piety contingent on people's paths crossing. Not to mention that there was no way of knowing how a given individual would misuse the money that we worked so hard for! That's how I learned to quickly look away and ignore the beggar trying to get my attention, and not think too hard (or at all) about the dirty, smelly nuisance disrupting my own busy life and hard-ea...

Popular discourse vilifies the economic top 1% for being responsible for the great inequality in the US. But what if they are not the only culprit? In his book Dream Hoarders: How the American Upper Middle Class Is Leaving Everyone Else in the Dust, Why That Is a Problem, and What to Do About It , Richard V. Reeves argues that the upper middle class (defined as the top quintile of income) is in some ways even more responsible for the unequal opportunity in American society. The upper middle class has enough collective wealth to exert influence, and constitutes a large enough voting block to wield political power. How exactly does the upper middle class contribute to inequality? By unfairly hoarding opportunities for itself: using policies ranging from legacy admissions to 529 plans, using connections to secure jobs and exclusionary zoning to isolate neighborhoods. We do this out of a very natural desire to prevent losing the advantages that we have gained (possibly over generations ...

After a long hiatus, I am rebooting Critical Exponent! My original site was built on WordPress and hosted on HostMonster . A few years ago, I got “ pharma-hacked ”, and HostMonster would not fix my site until I signed up for their security monitoring package. I figured I would fix the site myself, and I actually made good progress on doing that, learning a bit about the annoying way pharma-hacks work. Unfortunately, I got distracted by life and never did quite complete the process, and HostMonster somehow deleted my blog database. Luckily, I had backed it up when I started fixing my blog, so all that content is not completely lost. Anyway, I decided to start afresh. At the moment I am on Blogger for simplicity. At some point, if I need more features than Blogger offers I may switch this over to self-hosted WordPress again, but for now, my aim is to keep the administration simple so I can focus on content. It is also likely that I will import and back-date older posts, either from...