Let me get up close and personal with the Tragedy of the Commons.

We are all fond of complaining bitterly about the terrible job our politicians do. And yet almost none of us want to be active in politics, and a large fraction of citizens (sometimes a majority) don’t even bother to vote.

We criticize volunteer workers of all sorts, perhaps more mercilessly than the politicians, because we perceive volunteers to be of lower status than “professionals” and therefore easy to abuse. We go to Annual General Meetings to voice our complaints, but when it comes time to elect new Officers, no one wants the job.

We complain about taxes but we expect the government to protect us and provide everything we need for a better life. We already have a better life than most humans, but we are far more interested in improving our lot than in helping others improve theirs. When they hate us for this, we label them terrorists.

We march in protest against pesticides, fertilizers, GMO crops and “factory farms”, but our own contribution to organic, sustainable farming is to grow a few leaves of lettuce in the corner of our garden, if that. We feel smugly superior to pay extra for “organically grown” produce at the grocery store. Those who actually act on their idealistic vision of “getting back to the land” soon discover that farming is hard work and is incredibly inefficient unless done on a large scale.

We call for reductions of fossil fuel use and try to ignore the fact that in North America it takes on average a pound of fuel to grow a pound of food. We complain about the congestion and pollution in cities, then move to the country where we have to drive into town for groceries every day.

We complain about insulting ads and trashy programming on TV, but we spend hours a day staring slack-jawed at the screen, oblivious to the fact that it displays a distorted 4:3 image in 16:9 format.

We gripe about everyone else’s stupidity and ignorance, but we only take steps to correct our own when we are forced to by circumstances.

We are the spoiled brats of the world, and we are overdue for a spanking.

I wish I could ignore the fact that “we” includes “I”; but I can’t.

 

 

There was once a psychoanalyst who was fond of asking patients this question: “How much is your life worth, in kegs of beer?” The result was usually consternation and the intended focusing of attention. But it is a real question nonetheless. How much is your life worth in dollars? Well, obviously, to you it is worth more than anyone could pay, since without it you would not be around to enjoy the profits.

However, suppose you could save the life of someone you love by giving up your own? This can be a tough decision, but almost everyone is willing to take the question seriously, since it involves a life for a life, not money for a life.

If you win the big lottery, how many lives could you save with the money? Now divide your winnings by that number, and try to tell me that you have not just calculated the monetary value of a human life. I hope you will keep this figure in mind if you do win the big lottery. Again this is not a very threatening question, because it only involves saving lives with money.

Now we get into the hard stuff: are some lives worth more than others? We certainly seem to think so. Through our taxes and public services we will gladly spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to save the life of a child trapped in a well, but we may be reluctant to invest a similar amount to ward off starvation for an entire village of African farmers whose crops have failed due to drought. If you examine the implicit rationale from a biologist’s point of view, it seems clear that such priorities are dictated by a combination of sociological [formerly genetic] imperatives (“Family/tribe first!”) and what I call Gambler’s Economics (“I’ve got a big investment in this person already, and I’m not going to let it slip away!”). Although none of us are likely to be cheered by this view of our motives, we can probably live with it.

But here is a question that many people can’t even entertain: Suppose you could actually trade one life (not your own) for another, or for a dozen others? The classic example is the Cop’s Dilemma: a terrorist is holding a room full of people hostage with a bomb, and for a moment he puts down the trigger device to tie his shoelaces; you have a clear shot. Do you take it? The analysis of this situation will almost always be diverted into questions of whether you might be mistaken about the seriousness of the situation, or inventions of “better solutions” that surely must exist. No one wants to face the question head-on, because they probably sense the slippery slope that lies beyond it.

If you are willing to blow away one criminal to save many hostages, how about a more indirect exchange of lives? You are offered a massive amount of money to assassinate a political leader whom you dislike intensely and would just as soon be rid of; with this money you can save that African village.

If your main concern there is with getting caught, let’s crank it up a notch: a major drug dealer offers to move his operation out of your city if you will just eliminate the popular politician against whom he has a grudge. No, I don’t think it would be a good idea to trust a dealer’s word in such things, and I agree that an honest politician might someday do so much good that his or her life would be worth the continued predation of the drug trade; but we are avoiding the issue, aren’t we?

My purpose here is not to encourage murder, but to remind you of the “shades of grey” that mark all boundaries between good and evil. Simple pre- and proscriptions may help as guidelines, but they don’t let you off the hook for thinking through every important decision. You not only can, but must “put a price on a human life.”

 

 

Like all “-isms”, vegetarianism is an ideology, not a matter of taste. I have no quarrel with those who are convinced that a vegetarian diet is more healthy than the omnivorous diet of hunter-gatherers, nor with those who argue that meat is too costly to produce (in terms of food resources) in today’s overpopulated world, nor with those who decry unnecessary cruelty and brutality, nor with those who just don’t like the taste of meat. But I do have a quarrel with those who think it is barbaric to eat meat because animals have rights similar to those of humans.

First, let me offer my opinion on Rights: There is no such thing in Nature. “Rights” are a construct of, and exist only within, human society. What we call a “right” is actually a privilege that has been protected in cultural tradition and/or law after being fought for over many years, usually involving considerable loss of life. Rights are not to be taken lightly, but they are figments of our imagination.

It may come to pass that advocates of “Animal Rights” will win (via the usual means) such protected privileges for animals as the majority of we humans have mutually agreed upon for ourselves. Inasmuch as the animals have no understanding of human politics, it seems unlikely that they will be as vigilant in the maintenance of such “rights” as we humans are, so if PETA members are ever able to congratulate each other on “mission accomplished” and relax their attacks, it seems likely that any shrine to Animal Rights will be pulled down as quickly as the guarantee of freedom in a complacent society. But I digress.

Here is my message to PETA: What about Plant Rights? You seem to think it’s perfectly innocent to rip the reproductive organs from an apple tree and chew on them in full view of the helpless tree, but a humane kosher abbatoire is a barbaric abomination.

Do you not believe that plants have feelings? Have you never heard of Kirlian photography, which has shown that the aura of a plant changes when it is injured? And that the same changes occur when a human merely thinks about injuring the plant?

Plants have been around a lot longer than animals. Does seniority count for nothing with you?

Animals at least have a chance to escape the hunter; the plant is forced to wait quietly for death by dismemberment, planted in rows for easy “harvest” and force-fed with artificial fertilizers until all their vitality is engaged in reproduction. We have distorted the natural form of most plants through milennia of genetic manipulation and forced breeding, until today’s plants bear exaggerated genitalia which we tear away and consume without a thought.

Just because plants are unable to cry out their agony in a language we can understand, you deny the existence of their pain – the universal excuse for brutality: “They aren’t really living beings like us.”

I suppose a few people may heed my words and look for a less hideous way to obtain their sustenance. To them I say, phophylactically, “Equal Rights for Yeasts, Algae and Lichens!” and “Free the Fungi!”

 

For all these years that everyone has been sending me annual updates on their lives and those of their families, I’ve felt vaguely guilty for not reciprocating. It’s not as if nothing has happened in our lives for the last year (in any given year); it’s just that I am always still confused about what really happened and what it all means in the putative “greater scheme of things”.

I do know that there are some no-no’s I must avoid:

I musn’t call it a “Christmas Letter” or even an “Xmas Letter” because that implies that it’s only meant for folks that celebrate Xmas. Which would be pretty ironic given my own distaste for what that particular holiday has been turned into by our greed-driven Corporate/Consumerist society. (Ack! Don’t get me going.)

Bald-faced bragging is incredibly bad form, especially at this time of year when we are all supposed to have our empathic antennae tuned to the other instead of inward. So I can’t tell you about stuff I’m proud of, with the possible exception of my children’s accomplishments – and even that is really in rather poor taste. Fortunately I have already sent out dozens of Email notifications of these things during the year, when the anti-hubris injunctions were not in effect.

It should not run over one page, double-sided, single-spaced, in 8 pt font, because this season already kills enough trees, eh?

The font choice itself is a conundrum: if I expect anyone to actually read the thing, it would be more considerate to use at least 12 pt, if not 16 pt font, so that it will be easier to read – especially by my contemporaries whose eyesight is getting as bad as mine. But who can resist those lovely calligraphy fonts with all the swirls and wiggles?

Even without the above considerations, it is a mercy to avoid infinitesimal detail. Most people really don’t want to know all the preparatory details of that Pfeffernüße recipe.

All things considered, the optimal form for the Holiday Letter would seem to be a short poem summing things up concisely. So I’ll give it a try:

The trees are bare, the ground is froze,
we all can barely feel our toes,
Which signifies a time of celebration:
To raise a glass is not a sin,
nor are displays of wealth, if in
Defiance of Jack Frost’s intimidation. A year’s gone by, like those before;
we labored much, accomplished more –
Read and wrote and traveled and enjoyed it.
We won acclaim, success and fame;
we joined and later quit the game,
But had some fun whenever we employed it. 

The year reaches its nominal end
so that another can begin.
Let’s hope the new brings nothing new to fear.
Let’s fill it up with hope and cheer,
with winter whiskey, summer beer…
Remember, it is all uphill from here!

 

Lots of things are bad for you. This is not news, but every new instance is reported as if it were. Recently people are getting a little more sophisticated about statistics, with messages like, “Substance X has been found to increase your chances of contracting cancer of the Y with 95% confidence.” This tells you absolutely nothing useful until you have some more information, like the number of subjects in the study, the amounts of X to which they were exposed, and so on. Leaving out all the minutiae and assuming (charitably) that the statistical analysis has been done competently, there is one vital piece of information that every such message must include to be meaningful:

How bad is it for you?  If you are exposed to a specified amount of X, how much does your (already finite) probability of contracting cancer of the Y increase by? If you don’t wear a helmet while riding a bicycle, how much larger is your (already finite) probability of suffering a fatal head injury? This must be well established, or surely the law requiring helmets could not have passed. But how many people know the numbers?

Why do we tolerate such nonsense? Because we are mentally lazy and don’t want to have to deal with the complex balancing of priorities implied by a quantitative comparison. How much easier to say, “The only acceptable amount of X in the environment is zero,” or, “The only acceptable risk of a core meltdown in a reactor is zero,” than to ask what we get in return for accepting a finite amount of X exposure or a reactor with a mean time between meltdowns of 1,000 years. Such zero-tolerance declarations express the same sentiment as the person who says, “The only good X is a dead X.”

“If even one person might die as a result of Z, then Z must be forbidden, no matter what the cost.” How many times have you heard this comfortable rationale expressed? What an absurd notion! Lowering the bus fare by 10% in a city of a million people will inevitably result in some people dying “prematurely” who would otherwise have lived longer. The question is, would more people be saved by this action? Such policy decisions must always involve quantitative comparisons of costs and benefits, and human lives will always be part of the equation.

Many of the worst atrocities that have ever been perpetrated in this world were performed by people who were convinced they were acting rationally on behalf of justice and common sense. How is it possible for well-meaning people to go so far wrong? “Zero Tolerance” is how.

 

 

Ever notice how some phrases that have always seemed innocuous suddenly get really offensive when you stop to think about what they actually mean? (Look up “rule of thumb” sometime if you want to spoil that figure of speech for yourself.) The one that’s started bothering me since I got old enough to be sensitive about such things is “premature deaths“.

Every time a solemn health bureaucrat reports a discovery that something is bad for you, you will hear these words: “Studies have shown that [the bad thing] has caused [some number or percentage of] premature deaths in the last [time unit].”

Well, that certainly makes us want to avoid [the bad thing], but have you ever asked yourself how many of the other kind of deaths it has caused?

What other kind? Why, the non-premature kind, of course. What shall we call them? “Post-mature” deaths? “It’s about time, you old geezer!” deaths? Hold on here – if you want to label a death as non-premature, shouldn’t you have to ask the dying person first? “Would you say that your imminent death is premature?” I’m betting you’d find that almost every death is premature.

“Oh no,” the prim health bureaucrat assures me, “that’s not what it means at all. We have calculated everyone’s life expectancy and the probabilities of dying from various causes, so we know when you would normally be expected to die, and of what, so if you die sooner than that, of that cause, then it’s considered premature.” (Was that a condescending smile for this pathetic ignoramus?)

Yes folks, your days are actually numbered – literally! Here’s a little secret I bet you didn’t know: when you’re born they tattoo a little “best before” date where you’ll never notice it – on the underside of your tongue, amongst all the veins and salivary glands
and stuff you’d really rather not think about (sorry!). Moreover, it’s printed backwards, like a mirror image, so it is really hard to recognize as an expiry date. Why? So your dentist can check periodically to see how much longer you are good for. Yes, they’re all in on it, the dental hygienists too! Don’t let them catch you checking for it in the mirror.

Picture the doctor standing over your death bed with a clipboard and a watch: “Come on… come on… Dang! Missed the deadline! Oh well. Nurse, scratch out that check mark in the premature death box.”

Do they have a special “Post-Mature” ward at the hospital where they give token care to people who will no longer swell the ranks of premature cadavers when they kick off? Based on experience, I think maybe yes. But it isn’t a separate ward; everyone just knows….

OK, I’ve beaten this horse to death (there’s another phrase we might want to give up,
especially around Animal Rights folks). I just hope I’ve generated enough “cringe factor” to discourage the use of this particular offensive term and encourage those humourless health bureaucrats to find some other way of expressing their statistical inferences.

 

 

Weather reports and forecasts are almost as bad as commercials: they all make it abundantly clear that they consider their audience too stupid to understand simple relationships, in particular the possibility that our experience of getting cold depends on two variables in different ways. The temperature of the air is one factor; the transport of heat by that air is another. The latter depends on how rapidly the warmed-up air next to your skin is replaced by new cold air. That is, upon your clothing and upon the wind.

We hear, “The temperature is minus five, but with the wind chill factor it feels like minus twenty-two.”

No it doesn’t! It feels like minus five with a wind.

They never tell us what the wind speed is, but we can look it up separately. Consulting the table on WikipediA‘s “Wind chill” page reveals that (assuming US units) -5 F supposedly “feels like” -22 F if the wind speed is 10 mph. So let’s assume the wind speed is 10 mph.

Does -5 F in a 10 mph wind really feel like -22 F (presumably in still air, although they never specify that)? Hell no! It feels like -5 F in a 10 mph wind! Who among us could not tell the difference? Would you dress the same for both, ignoring the penetrability of that bulky sweater that keeps you cozy warm in still air? Let’s hope not. If so, how many people have frozen to death in windy -5 F weather because they blindly accepted the idiotic distortions of weatherfolks? Perhaps a class action suit is in order.

The WikipediA page also informs us that, "The wind chill temperature is never higher than the air temperature, and the windchill is undefined at higher temperatures (above 10^oC [50^oF]). Humidity on the skin can result in a higher perceived air temperature, which is accurately termed the heat index (or humidex), and is used instead; note however that heat index figures do not include any reference to wind speed."

How dumb is that? The same factors that determine how fast you lose heat due to thermal contact with the air determine how fast the sweat on your skin will evaporate – our bodies’ main mechanism for thermal regulation at high temperature. So still air with high humidity is a killer; that’s why we invented fans a few thousand years ago. Air with lower water content will keep you cooler; so will a nice breeze. But we are too stupid to grasp such complex relationships. The best our self-appointed caregivers can do is to report a “humidex” in the form of, “Feels like a hundred degrees!”

No it doesn’t. Not unless it is a hundred degrees.