Mailer and Conspiracy, via Achenblog

Joel Achenbach at Achenblog comments on Norman Mailer's conspiracy theory on Newsweek:

"Journalists and pundits and aging novelists should try to think more like scientists, who typically favor parsimonious rather than elaborate theories. Dan Rather and Mary Mapes and many other reporters have gotten in trouble when they've tried too hard to prove a theory and ignored possible alternative explanations (like, these documents could be fraudulent). Conspiracies do exist, but so do simple mistakes. The Mailer scenario has an implausible number of moving parts. That's not to say that it couldn't be possible, only that it's exceedingly more likely that a journalist unwisely relied on a single source who didn't know what he was talking about. Happens all the time, and you don't need the White House Office of Counter-Espionage to orchestrate it."

I absolutely agree. I also comment: "Mistakes are much more common than conspiracies. A mistake has only one prerequisite: a person. A conspiracy requires two people."

Three Party Conflicts

One of the interesting aspects of the Koran flushing episode is the light it throws on three party conflicts. What do I mean?

Take any war. Typically it seems that the adversaries demonize each other. It's easy to think of examples: Japanese in WWII, Chinese in Korean War, native Americans in the Indian Wars, parents in a divorce. But there are cases where there are third parties, neutral states or fence-sitters, children in domestic disputes. In these cases both combatants try to appeal to the neutrals for support, or at least to keep them from joining the other side.

In the case of Bush's war on terror, we see both impulses at work in the U.S. Demonizing the adversary--there's plenty of it. Appealing to the neutrals--also plenty. After Bush's first misuse of "crusade", he's been careful to include Islam as one of the U.S.'s major religions, etc. To the extent that Americans in uniform have mistreated the Koran, that fits the demonization side. To the extent that the Establishment is horrified by the Newsweek error, the net effect of the episode seems to reinforce American tolerance.

Kerala and Reading

The Christian Science Monitor has a very interesting piece on the Indian state of Kerala, known for its radicalism and more recently for its universal literacy.

"The roots of Kerala's literacy culture can be traced back at least to the Hindu rulers of the 19th century. The Queen of Trivandrum issued a royal decree in 1817 that said, 'The state should defray the entire cost of the education of its people in order that there might be no backwardness in the spread of enlightenment.' She hoped education would make her people 'better subjects and public servants.'"

Significantly, that's earlier than in the U.S., showing the power of enlightened autocracy. This also shows the effect of the first mover.

Rice's focused style creates learning curve at State - The Washington Times: World - May 18, 2005

Management style makes a difference. Kudos to the The Washington Times: World for an article on the differences between Powell and Rice. Powell was into e-mail and was open to messages from the bureaucracy. Rice is more like Ike, short memos and structured meetings with input from fewer people. The Times doesn't mention another obvious difference: Rice likes to travel and meet while Powell didn't. It would be interesting to know more about the differences--does Rice's personality fit with a classical musician as opposed to a jazz one? Have the differences always been there or is the relative experience of each a factor?

From a bureaucrat's view there's no consistent advantage to either style. Each has strengths and weaknesses, and each will produce good results on particular types of issues. On the whole, though, I'd prefer a traveller who e-mails.

The Sepoy Mutiny and Flushing the Koran

History is instructive, as reader Sean McEnroe observes in letters to the Washington Post:

"In 1857 the British were nearly driven out of India when rumor spread among their Hindu and Muslim soldiers that ammunition was coated in unclean grease from cows and pigs. A year later, after much death and destruction, the British were wise enough to realize that the conflict was not just about rifle cartridges. I hope U.S. policymakers understand that the past week's anti-American riots in Afghanistan ['Afghan Protests Spread,' news story, May 14] were not just about one Newsweek article."

Definitional Drift: Math Goes Postmodern

According to the LATimes, solving mathematical propositions and proving the solution is correct has become so difficult mathematicians are either giving up or turning to the computer to do checking by brute computational force. In the end, if the community agrees it's solved, it's solved.
So:

"Like so many other fields, mathematics is becoming less about some Platonic ideal of ultimate answers, and more a functional project of computational simulation and communal negotiation. Dare we say it: Math is becoming postmodern."

Writing History for Governement, Ernest May and 9/11

Ernest May, an eminent historian, provides a look behind the scenes at the writing of the 9/11 report. Worth reading for anyone interested in 9/11. But as a bureaucrat I was struck by this quote, following a description of how Richard Clarke's Delenda plan made no impact on the bigshots:

"... we learned that many documents in SOLIC files never reached--or at least made no impression on--secretaries or deputy secretaries or other assistant secretaries of defense or senior military officers. Pentagon witnesses reminded us that they had had a lot of other matters on their minds, including military operations in Bosnia and Kosovo and the reshaping of forces to fit a post-Cold War world. "

Bureaucracies move paper. Unfortunately, you often need a bureaucracy to focus on an issue, but the paper storm rains on all alike. One of the first things a bureaucrat learns is to ignore paper generated outside her bureaucracy. Unless, of course, somehow it's going to be followed by a direction from on high to do something. That's one of the points of Jamie Gorelick's pressing the issue of the Y2K meetings that "shook the trees" (I think that's the term.) Such meetings can get people paying attention.

Another interesting bit was this:

"Writing the bulk of the report as straightforward narrative helped the commission achieve its surprising unanimity."

The narrative focused the commission on the facts and the chronology first. That's a lesson bloggers often ignore--you need to establish what the reality is before you go off.

Finally, the commission's work reaffirmed Richard Neustadt's observation about Presidential power. Clinton had little power over DOD, CIA, or FBI; they were all alienated. That's one reason to take many political scientists and economists with a large grain of salt when they write about bureaucracies. Personalities count a hell of a lot, especially at the margins, and 9/11 showed us the margins matter.

Why Are Whippersnappers Smarter Than Me?

The "Flynn effect" is the observation that people keep getting smarter--that is, each time IQ tests are redone and revalidated, people who score 100 on the new test score over 100 on the old. See this article in Wired. Apparently this is true over all industrialized countries. So the assumption is that "G" (general intelligence) is real but responds to the environment, regardless of data that seems to show that the correlation of IQ and heredity is about 60 percent. The question is what would account for it--the author pushes the hypothesis that cognitively demanding leisure activities push it. (More later.)

The article includes this bit:

"Four years ago, Flynn and William Dickens, a Brookings Institution economist, proposed another explanation [than intelligence depending on genes], one made apparent to them by the Flynn effect. Imagine 'somebody who starts out with a tiny little physiological advantage: He's just a bit taller than his friends,' Dickens says. 'That person is going to be just a bit better at basketball.' Thanks to this minor height advantage, he tends to enjoy pickup basketball games. He goes on to play in high school, where he gets excellent coaching and accumulates more experience and skill. 'And that sets up a cycle that could, say, take him all the way to the NBA,' Dickens says."

I'm struck by this because I firmly believe in vicious and virtuous cycles. Addiction is more common than we know and so is saintliness. Putting one's faith in cycles also cuts the Gordian knot for liberals: how do we reconcile the evidence for genetic correlation and our faith in equality? (There would be a side question of inheritable personality traits. When we disapprove we call them addictive personalities, when we approve we talk of persistence, stubbornness, etc.)

Back to the Flynn effect. As well as cycles I believe in the power of learning by example, learning by osmosis. Humans imitate, they imitate from birth. The fact is that the poorest among us still live a life of more choice and complexity, more stimulation, than my college educated great grandfather did in 1850. (I hasten to qualify--the comparison is not so stark as I state it. Our ancestors knew and dealt with many things we don't, but none of them appear on IQ tests.) So all our children are exposed to our dealings with the complex, human-formed life and absorb lessons. These get reflected in IQ test development and in performance on the test.

What's a Liberal Foreign Policy?

One of the principal findings of the Pew Research Report is:

"Foreign affairs assertiveness now almost completely distinguishes Republican-oriented voters from Democratic-oriented voters; this was a relatively minor factor in past typologies."

I've reservations on this issue. Back when Clinton was being reasonably assertive in foreign policy many, perhaps most, liberals supported him against the criticisms of the Republicans. Some liberals were quiet and some worried about a Vietnam/Somalia result. There were isolationist Republicans who didn't want any foreign adventures and "realist" Kissinger-types who didn't see any point in worrying about minor things like genocide and ethnic cleansing. Eagleburger thought the Balkans were (was?) a mess we should leave to Europe. Now most Republicans have moved to back their President and liberals have been pushed towards pacificism by Bush's actions.

I think the reality of the world is such that any future Democratic President is going to be more activist than the party currently is. I also think we should admit that our foreign policy differences are often more an issue of trust rather than principle. We Democrats would trust a Clinton where we don't trust a Bush. We should admit that almost all of us would support military action in some situations and believe that American principles can be powerful in some cases. I think our differences are really more at the margin--liberal hawks on Iraq thought the evil and the threat were certain enough and our military and economic power dominating enough that intervention was not terribly risky. Liberal doves thought the uncertainties of military too great, particularly after the inspectors got back in.

Looking back, the doves can argue the inspectors did their job. The issue for the future is whether there's some way for the world community to impose inspections for the long haul on a dictator.

Together or Apart? Keys to Success

The Washington Post does an article today on a school in Connecticut, similar to KIPP, very structured, very detailed, very successful in getting black students to achieve. It includes this quote from a school leader:

"'Any society, including a street gang, provides its members with status symbols. In many cases, what is getting valued is drugs, sex and money. We have to control what is valued in society. To get these kids to learn, we have to get them to believe that it is cool to do well in school.'

Amistad, Toll explains, is trying to turn the values of the street upside down. The school teaches students that it is 'cool' to do your homework, 'uncool' to be a bully."

It fits what Bill Cosby and William Raspberry have said--that elements of black culture decrease the chances for academic success. It also fits into a chain of logic that would explain why African-Americans achieve less than first and second generation immigrants from Africa or the Caribbean. The idea would be that immigrants isolate themselves from their former society so they are more focused on things like success and less restricted by commitments to other norms. A recent Pulitzer winner on slavery up to the great migration (1920) emphasizes the degree to which slaves were able to establish networks of relationships and used the networks after the Civil War in playing a role in political life in the South.

However, there's always the counter-example of the Jews, and other diaspora groups who do much better than the surrounding society. My best argument there, which isn't totally convincing, is that it's the nature of the culture. In other words, success can come two ways: by being part of a culture that focuses on and rewards success, or; by being somewhat separating from one's native culture so the focus is more on the individual.

I've no doubt I'll return to this subject.