Why are people so obsessed with the average scores?
If having rich and/or intelligent people in classes with poor/stupid people makes the average level higher beyond the addition of a high-end datum to the mix, it's not necessarily a good thing.
Yes, we want low-achievers to achieve more. But why should we sacrifice the achievement of high-achievers to that end?
If high achievers take less teacher time, and hence allow more time to be dedicated to low achievers in order to get everyone over a threshold, we're sacrificing the high-achiever's achievement beyond that threshold.
What is it that makes a high-achiever deserving of discrimination? Why should such a person get less teaching time than a low achiever?
If we want a society of utter equality, and are willing to enforce it, why don't we shave everyone's head to stop bald people standing out? Why not pluck out everyone's eyes to stop blind people being disadvantaged?
The idea that good pupils should be forced into classes in order to benefit other pupils is monstrous. We should show that this will not hurt their education in any way, and consider other giant reorganisations of the educational system that will cost a lot to introduce, before we jump on the idea.
I am, by the way, very sceptical of the idea that good pupils act as role-models for bad ones. In my limited experience of dealing with children it seems more like a couple of bad apples can sour the whole barrel, rather than a few good ones making everything better.
Private schools do promote inequality. That is a bad thing. But selection is not a bad thing, and if state schools streamed pupils, as happens in Holland, and used to happen here, then I'd happily shut down private schools.
The argument against private schools has to be a separate one from the horrific ideals/ unproven assertions of the arguments against selection.
Showing posts with label justice. Show all posts
Showing posts with label justice. Show all posts
Tuesday, 17 January 2012
Driving dangerously
It turns out that driving dangerously isn't the problem: the problem is driving having taken drugs. I don't understand it: if you're not dangerous to others, why should the law be concerned with what you do?
The argument, presumably, is that you're more dangerous than you were. But if we're going to take that line, then we should also make it illegal to drive once you're 50, because your reaction times are also slower when you're older. I don't remember the precise comparisons, but a 70-year old's reactions are as bad as a 20-year old's who has drunk more than enough to be over the limit.
If we care about danger, we should be testing reaction times. If we want old people to be able to drive, we should set a low reaction time limit, and train drivers and adjust traffic controls and car settings appropriately. We should then allow young people to be freer with impairing substances, because they can take it.
If we care about driving dangerously, we should prosecute the people who create speed differences, since it is changes in speed that cause problems. People who drive slowly on high-speed roads are as much of a danger as people who are driving fast and watching ahead of them appropriately, with cars tuned to have brakes good enough for the speed they can reach.
If we care about people's attitudes, then we have no way to judge them except through observation, and since dangerous driving is already an offence, we don't need any additional law about it.
The data about drink and drugged-driving look impressive, but if 20% of road fatalities are attributable to them, there's still plenty of room for other factors to be important. If there were as big a social stigma on 'old-driving' as there is on drink-driving, I wonder how many accidents would have 'old-driving' listed as a contributing factor (since drink-driving is always a contributory factor when someone who's drunk anything is involved in an accident).
Both of today's news stories suffer from the same problem: there is an assumption that everyone is identical; that any already identified differences are irrelevant and that everyone in the story is starting from the same blank slate. For better or worse people are different: like snowflakes, we have near-endless variety but share some basic features. Many people have waxed lyrical about the beauty of human diversity, and yet it seems that the basic message has yet to penetrate the thick skulls of many of those same people.
Our differences are morally neutral (barring differences caused by decisions, which can be morally charged), but in physical effects it's obvious that they are not neutral, and that we are not all the same. Any system which confuses the two is a confused system that needs changing.
If we have identified a physical effect that we want to avoid in society, then because humans vary we cannot treat everyone the same. That's like telling everyone that we want no-one to run faster than 20 mph, so everyone needs to run at 60% of maximum. It's ridiculous. Some people will be closer to the windy side of the law than others, and that's just the way it is.
Obesity costs other people money
I read this article with a combination of amusement and horror. We're looking at market forces colliding with moral ones, and for once I'm on the side of the markets, mostly because I disagree with the moral assertion being made.
If fat people are poor, don't spend money and require more resources, it's no surprise that the markets aren't accommodating them. Given that obesity is overwhelmingly a consequence of a person's decisions, not an unpreventable disease, there is no justification at all for making everyone else suffer in order to make fat people happier (nor would there be if it were entirely chance, but that's another argument entirely). If the obese section were as large as the men's or women's sections in a shop ('not just in the fat people's corner at the back') then there'd be less room for choice for normal people. Men already have to put up with always having to march half-way through any clothes shop, rather than being able to pop in and buy immediately, and that's because they're not impulse buyers, and because they tend to have a goal, rather than a gathering mentality that will pick up something that looks good that they've seen.
Clothing for the obese doesn't look good, because being obese doesn't look good (except to a few people with unusual tastes, just as there's someone into anything). It's no wonder the fat section is at the back with the menswear. Furthermore, it's not just fat people who can't find anything that fits. I am not able to find trousers that fit me, and must buy fat people's trousers and wear a belt, because manufacturers take one ratio of sizes and simply expand or shrink their clothes, ensuring that anyone not of these specific proportions will be stuck. If anyone deserves to complain, it's athletic people. Trousers and jackets are made for people with a significant degree of middle-aged spread and no muscle on their legs. Jackets in the shops always sag backwards because there's too much material around the waist, and trousers never fit because there's too little material everywhere else at the appropriate waist size. But I haven't started a campaign group because it's my choice to do exercise and be healthy, and I know that being different from the crowd will inevitably mean that the mass market won't cater for me well.
Similarly, where's the point in 'giving [fat people] ideas and styles that we can work with ' when the purpose of a style is to look good, and being fat doesn't? I understand that there might be clothes that make fat people look better than other clothes, but those probably aren't the same styles that look good on normal or thin people. Whilst being overweight might be an epidemic, apparently they're poor and hence unlikely to spend on profitable items. There isn't much money to be made in appealing (if it's possible) displays of cheap clothes; shops want to put their cheap, bulk items on a shelf and display the high-priced fashion items. So again, fat people and men won't get as much shop space.
If we force, or persuade, companies to give up shop space for fatties, and it's not as profitable as their current arrangement, that will ensure that the rest of us pay a higher price on our goods, in order to make up the shortfall. I'm not convinced that I should pay more because of the lifestyle choices of others. I pay more because of my lifestyle choices (I have to search for good clothes for longer etc.) and because of natural chance in body shape, and I accept that. If obese people think that they should get to push shopping away from the profitable distribution of goods because of a moral claim they have, then I, as an athlete and a man, have a moral claim for the same reason, and shops should be made to cater to every clothing interest group.
It's probably now obvious what I'll say about theatre, loo and hospital bed sizes. These things cost me money. If the seat is larger than I need, I will pay more than would be necessary for my ticket, because the theatre will have greater upkeep costs on a larger building and greater debt for its construction. If a hospital must invest in specialist equipment for the grossly obese then my taxes are not going on universal care, such as for muscle injuries, broken bones or simply old age. Every adaptation to overweight people in the population costs me money, either through taxes or through higher costs.
When it comes to theatres, I avoid them because I can see it on television or video and I hate being squashed into a space that would be illegally small if it were for livestock, and I'll probably enjoy the extra space. But by the time there's enough space to stop obese people feeling squashed I'll be paying for what is effectively a room of my own, not a seat.
I think the moral thing to do would be to charge obese people more, not try to warp the market to make others pay more. We need the people who have caused these increased costs to pay for them. The most important part of this is in the NHS, which spends a huge amount of money on illnesses related to being overweight. If all that money were free to be spent on research (bearing in mind that these illnesses are mostly chronic ones and so old-age care would not therefore cost more if everyone were fitter and healthier) then the annual health research budget of this country would over double. If people are too poor to afford to be overweight, then as with any other thing that costs, they should just have to do without. There is no justification for expecting a normal life when you're not normal.
Saturday, 6 November 2010
Displacement
I read a bit further in The Spirit Level, which I still haven't got round to finishing, even though it's interesting (perhaps because it seemed like the first chapter gave the whole book away), and came across an explanation of displacement: how people come to take out feelings engendered in one situation on another situation.
I've been discussing this in person recently, since I don't do this at all, and I find it hard to understand or recognise it. When someone acts a certain way towards me, I assume it's deliberate.
Apparently, displacement happens more when people feel helpless, or powerless to change their situation, when the system is very hierarchical and when the loss is particularly great. So, for example, people who feel deprived of social status by an encounter with someone might attempt to prove their status through exerting power over another person who is lower down the hierarchy, or over whom they have power.
I'm not sure if this happens especially when there's injustice, or whether the nasty encounter necessarily involves injustice in order to feel like a loss of status.
It is this strange phenomenon that causes sexually abused people to abuse others; both children who grow up to be abusers and prisoners who repeat the offence on other prisoners. Most people agree that this involves a messed-up attitude to the world and might be a reason, but is insufficient excuse for repeating the crime. Certainly I'd say that one ought to have learnt how nasty it is, and avoid it even more. However, it's exactly the same process as occurs when someone's feeling a bit moody and snaps at a family member. The only difference is that people accept the first as normal! In principle they're the same, and we should tolerate them to the same extent.
So this post is an introspective one. Do I not displace aggression because I feel superior? Do I not care about status and therefore not feel the need to prove it? Do I not see the hierarchy that others do? I think that the second and third questions are similar: I don't see hierarchies that others think exist, and therefore don't care about them. I'm secure: I don't have insecurities about myself; I have good self-knowledge and am not deluded. But I know that I do feel aggression (anger) about many injustices. It's just that it's the injustice that makes me angry; I hate injustice, and wouldn't perpetrate another one because that wouldn't satisfy me: I would want to give punishment to the criminal, not just get even with the world in general.
Now we're talking about treating people like individuals, and giving justice to individuals, or alternatively, treating the rest of the world as an entity with shared karma, we're touching on previously adumbrated philosophical positions (although with different language). Philosophers have considered the world a great karma-sharing place in which we're all tied through membership, bonds of empathy or other mystic union. I don't like that idea, and here I think I can demonstrate one way in which I find it unpleasant: because although the union is intended to be a justification for not hurting others, because we're bound together in some way, it also justifies injustice, because we're all linked, so karma will cycle round to the right person, or because it's all the same.
Breaking down the rigid barriers that in my mind separate individuals might justify empathy, but it also makes people treat other humans as less than individual; they treat the world as one entity, rather than truly recognising people as different. If they recognise their membership of this entity, that might be good (although I'd say wrong), but if they don't it leads to horror.
This scale, of individualism to collectivism, has been known and used before, but as far as I know only in terms of moral or political belief. The definition of the scale as a way of gauging how a person actually feels about (or views) the world and others had not occurred to me before. It certainly seems a good way to categorise a rather different mindset from the moral or political meanings of the words. I've met a lot of people who rely on moral intuition, feelings and empathy for moral insight. The extent to which a person relies on empathy should, I suppose, directly correlate with their place on the individualism scale. Obviously I'd equate individualism with rationality, and collectivism with emotion.
I'd even venture to suggest that the optimism of collectivists (about human nature) is so hard to argue with precisely because it isn't rational. They want to promote empathy, and believe that if only people would accept rational arguments for how empathy can justify morality, we would all be moral.
However, as we all know, you can't engender a feeling (empathy) with rational argument, so they're on a hiding to nothing. I would place myself on the other end of the scale, hoping to use rational arguments to engender rational acquiescence with the idea and consequences of treating others truly as individuals. Obviously I equally well can't remove empathy, if it's there, but I don't need to. The rational agreement with my arguments would be enough to cause moral actions. Of course making it subconscious by somehow making people 'feel' others' individuality, in the way that I 'feel' injustice, especially when the perpetrator feels righteous about it, would make moral action more reliable, but it's not necessary.
That would be the end of it, except that it's interesting to consider further the additional dichotomy between feeling others' pain, and feeling injustice. Many people equate the two: someone feeling pain is an injustice. The most popular argument underlying morality at the moment is to base it on avoiding pain. Obviously I disagree, and have made this clear many times in discussions. The question is always then "On what would you base morality?" as if that were sufficient support for pain as the basis of morality.
When I answer "Justice" I get laughed at. "But we define justice depending on morality, so you haven't really answered anything." I'm told. Yes, that's true in one way: if justice depends on what you say morality is, then I've created circular definitions. But in another way, I've merely repeated their own logic: if we are to base morality on something, why not giving each individual what he deserves, rather than avoiding pain to all?
Of course my definition needs further clarification, in that I haven't defined what each person deserves, but I don't regard complexity as a reason to discard a solution. The normal (Gaussian) distribution seems like a complex formula to most people, but that doesn't stop it being a good description of population spreads.
So perhaps I query the whole basis of much moral philosophy because of a simple character trait: the compartmentalisation of my life so that I treat people as they've treated me, rather than as I have recently been treated overall. Or perhaps it's the other way around: I've strengthened the trait because of my philosophy. Whichever it is, it's a shame that philosophers don't consider my point of view, but merely dismiss it because of current fashion. That doesn't seem like rational thought and enquiry to me... but then philosophy isn't, currently, rational enquiry, being based on empathy, feelings and intuition, so why should I expect philosophers to act according to my philosophical ideal?
Well, since philosophy touts itself as the thought underlying everything, it seems reasonable to expect it to rely on thought, not feeling. That's my short answer. And that's why individualism trumps collectivism, and doing justice is more important than avoiding hurt.
I've been discussing this in person recently, since I don't do this at all, and I find it hard to understand or recognise it. When someone acts a certain way towards me, I assume it's deliberate.
Apparently, displacement happens more when people feel helpless, or powerless to change their situation, when the system is very hierarchical and when the loss is particularly great. So, for example, people who feel deprived of social status by an encounter with someone might attempt to prove their status through exerting power over another person who is lower down the hierarchy, or over whom they have power.
I'm not sure if this happens especially when there's injustice, or whether the nasty encounter necessarily involves injustice in order to feel like a loss of status.
It is this strange phenomenon that causes sexually abused people to abuse others; both children who grow up to be abusers and prisoners who repeat the offence on other prisoners. Most people agree that this involves a messed-up attitude to the world and might be a reason, but is insufficient excuse for repeating the crime. Certainly I'd say that one ought to have learnt how nasty it is, and avoid it even more. However, it's exactly the same process as occurs when someone's feeling a bit moody and snaps at a family member. The only difference is that people accept the first as normal! In principle they're the same, and we should tolerate them to the same extent.
So this post is an introspective one. Do I not displace aggression because I feel superior? Do I not care about status and therefore not feel the need to prove it? Do I not see the hierarchy that others do? I think that the second and third questions are similar: I don't see hierarchies that others think exist, and therefore don't care about them. I'm secure: I don't have insecurities about myself; I have good self-knowledge and am not deluded. But I know that I do feel aggression (anger) about many injustices. It's just that it's the injustice that makes me angry; I hate injustice, and wouldn't perpetrate another one because that wouldn't satisfy me: I would want to give punishment to the criminal, not just get even with the world in general.
Now we're talking about treating people like individuals, and giving justice to individuals, or alternatively, treating the rest of the world as an entity with shared karma, we're touching on previously adumbrated philosophical positions (although with different language). Philosophers have considered the world a great karma-sharing place in which we're all tied through membership, bonds of empathy or other mystic union. I don't like that idea, and here I think I can demonstrate one way in which I find it unpleasant: because although the union is intended to be a justification for not hurting others, because we're bound together in some way, it also justifies injustice, because we're all linked, so karma will cycle round to the right person, or because it's all the same.
Breaking down the rigid barriers that in my mind separate individuals might justify empathy, but it also makes people treat other humans as less than individual; they treat the world as one entity, rather than truly recognising people as different. If they recognise their membership of this entity, that might be good (although I'd say wrong), but if they don't it leads to horror.
This scale, of individualism to collectivism, has been known and used before, but as far as I know only in terms of moral or political belief. The definition of the scale as a way of gauging how a person actually feels about (or views) the world and others had not occurred to me before. It certainly seems a good way to categorise a rather different mindset from the moral or political meanings of the words. I've met a lot of people who rely on moral intuition, feelings and empathy for moral insight. The extent to which a person relies on empathy should, I suppose, directly correlate with their place on the individualism scale. Obviously I'd equate individualism with rationality, and collectivism with emotion.
I'd even venture to suggest that the optimism of collectivists (about human nature) is so hard to argue with precisely because it isn't rational. They want to promote empathy, and believe that if only people would accept rational arguments for how empathy can justify morality, we would all be moral.
However, as we all know, you can't engender a feeling (empathy) with rational argument, so they're on a hiding to nothing. I would place myself on the other end of the scale, hoping to use rational arguments to engender rational acquiescence with the idea and consequences of treating others truly as individuals. Obviously I equally well can't remove empathy, if it's there, but I don't need to. The rational agreement with my arguments would be enough to cause moral actions. Of course making it subconscious by somehow making people 'feel' others' individuality, in the way that I 'feel' injustice, especially when the perpetrator feels righteous about it, would make moral action more reliable, but it's not necessary.
That would be the end of it, except that it's interesting to consider further the additional dichotomy between feeling others' pain, and feeling injustice. Many people equate the two: someone feeling pain is an injustice. The most popular argument underlying morality at the moment is to base it on avoiding pain. Obviously I disagree, and have made this clear many times in discussions. The question is always then "On what would you base morality?" as if that were sufficient support for pain as the basis of morality.
When I answer "Justice" I get laughed at. "But we define justice depending on morality, so you haven't really answered anything." I'm told. Yes, that's true in one way: if justice depends on what you say morality is, then I've created circular definitions. But in another way, I've merely repeated their own logic: if we are to base morality on something, why not giving each individual what he deserves, rather than avoiding pain to all?
Of course my definition needs further clarification, in that I haven't defined what each person deserves, but I don't regard complexity as a reason to discard a solution. The normal (Gaussian) distribution seems like a complex formula to most people, but that doesn't stop it being a good description of population spreads.
So perhaps I query the whole basis of much moral philosophy because of a simple character trait: the compartmentalisation of my life so that I treat people as they've treated me, rather than as I have recently been treated overall. Or perhaps it's the other way around: I've strengthened the trait because of my philosophy. Whichever it is, it's a shame that philosophers don't consider my point of view, but merely dismiss it because of current fashion. That doesn't seem like rational thought and enquiry to me... but then philosophy isn't, currently, rational enquiry, being based on empathy, feelings and intuition, so why should I expect philosophers to act according to my philosophical ideal?
Well, since philosophy touts itself as the thought underlying everything, it seems reasonable to expect it to rely on thought, not feeling. That's my short answer. And that's why individualism trumps collectivism, and doing justice is more important than avoiding hurt.
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